The Calling
by SurrenderTheSociopaths
Summary: "I walked into another world. The planet was dead, but the darkness was calling my name." Natasha is having daydreams. But these aren't fantasies - they aren't even nightmares. All she knows is that something is calling her name, and slowly but surely, that is something bleeding into reality. Hints of Clintasha. Post Avengers 1, possible AoU references.
1. Chapter 1

_"Natasha."_

The sand was black under her feet. It was a strange feeling, watching it be shaped by an invisible ocean. Momentary ripples, long snakes that meandered under the beach, were washed away and then replaced, but there was no water moving them. No, definitely no water. Although she could not say for certain, Natasha felt that whatever was moving the sand was not physical at all. It was like - she puzzled over the words for it in her head for a few seconds - like a collection of ideas. Little tiny thoughts that hooked together, swimming through the air until they formed an ocean, and sweeping the grains into curves.

For a reason that did not cement itself in her mind, the spy reached out her hand. The ideas that shaped the coastline did not become clearer.

A question floated into Natasha's head. It was not quite her own, she thought, and its answer inferred that it was rhetorical, but she felt that it wasn't part of the sea in front of her.

" _WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE WATER IS GONE?"_ it asked. In her mind, it appeared in uppercase. " _IT IS REPLACED BY IDEAS. IDEAS AND HEAT."_

And sure enough, that was what she saw before her. In as much as an idea can be described - a haze of emotion, of before and after, of _now_ \- that was what rolled over the sand. It filled little dips in the beach, little puddles of concept nestled into the dark, and Natasha could feel it lapping at her legs as she cautiously advanced.

" _THE HEAT."_ the Question reminded her, as if she were a child whose mind had wandered off from a task. It was indeed hot, although not particularly unpleasant. Despite the sand resembling charcoal, very little of it was scorched, and although warm, the spy was certain the heat had not reached the point of fire. But this troubled her. It was hot enough for a fire to start, she was sure. Fire needed fuel. There might be no water, but there would be _some_ sort of fuel somewhere. What else?

Oxygen.

And it became apparent, that there was no oxygen slipping into her lungs. Natasha stumbled back from the ocean and gripped her throat. It felt suddenly empty, although some kind of force stopped her from choking. There was an air here, but it did not give her the satisfaction of that of what she was used to. Her mind found the time to provide a list of how much of her body needed oxygen, the release of energy rather dominating the top. Indeed, without it, her cells would not function.

Then how was she -

 _"MOVING? HOW DOES ONE DESCRIBE THE EXPERIENCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE?"_

Her conclusion was that she was just being illogical. After all, she could provide no proof that there was no oxygen. Her feet could traverse the sand, and arm could extend outward; her cells were working. There was no proof!

 _"WATER IS JUST OXYGEN WITH HYDROGEN IN TOW."_

The Question was annoying her. It was telling her she was wrong, in a subtle manner, but (and most annoyingly) after she had told _herself_ she was wrong in the first place. The spy felt the sand move around her feet, and realised that the tide was coming in. Adjusting to the air again, she took a step backwards and looked up. But there was nothing to look up to. That is, she could not decipher what was there. Suddenly, much as the lack of oxygen had suddenly become apparent, the lack of light had too. She knew that the sand was black, and if you asked her, she could describe reflections bounding off those tiny bits of quartz - but she could not _see_ it. Though she did not mean to allow it, panic nibbled at her bones, as all perception of the world around her suddenly fell. The feeling of death enveloped what used to be the beach, and the sand around her scattered until it left her standing alone, on the purest of nothingness.

 _"Natasha."_

This was not the Question, she was sure. It did not advertise itself in caps, for one.

 _"Natasha."_

Darkness dug its way into her head, and the air (though not containing the oxygen that she craved) was cruelly drawn out from her lungs. The softened, curious feeling from when she had first walked in was replaced by fear and loneliness, coupled with immense discomfort as she could not bring herself to breathe. Then, to her surprise, she could see again. Her eyes were slits forcing against the calling of her name, but they could single out what _it_ was. Though it was recognition that greeted her, a name for the _thing_ did not find its way inside of her mind. Her hand reached out again, and was met with a cold touch. She pulled it closer, as if it existed at the end of a rope, and then, in a fit of anger and oxygen-deprived thoughts, she extended her fingers and ripped out its essence. The lack of oxygen, suddenly important, flicked a distant switch in her brain. The slits of her vision slammed shut and her body dropped to the floor.

* * *

Natasha violently awoke in Clint's arms, drawing in a chestful of air with considerable force. When she realised that the scream she had let out was rather meek, she opened her mouth to try again, but found only thin gasps would come to her lips.

"You're okay, you're okay!" Clint assured her, holding her close to his chest. A faint thought pulsed in her mind, one that she was developing for the Question. 'No, the ocean was not made of water.' she would tell it. ' _But,_ an ocean is not always water - it can be any liquid. A sea of mercury requires no oxygen, and so, the lack of substance for ocean does not prove that there is no oxygen."

"Nat? You're okay, alright?"

She tried not to struggle. Eventually, she pushed back off of his chest and met his gaze.

"What was it this time?" he whispered, with genuine interest. But his words were said gently, with caution. He invited a response, and watched her carefully, to see if he might have to read her in some other way. But her eyes drilled into the back of his head, a sense of fear and desperation locking on and closing in, and Clint had the feeling that she had shifted into another Natasha. Though her breaths were still shaky, her body was now eerily still. And those eyes, those damn eyes again, sparked fiercely with the bright orange of determined fury.

She swallowed strongly before she spoke.

"I walked into another world. The planet was dead, but the darkness was calling my name." She did not break eye contact, and Clint's eyes flicked from side to side to try and read the subtext of what she was saying. "I walked further. There was no sound but the calling, deep and heavy. There was no oxygen for my lungs. There was no light for my eyes."

For a little while, she was silent. Clint shuffled uneasily.

"And then I stared into the blackness. And it stared back at me. And I reached out, and tore its heart from its body and threw it to the floor." There was no emotion in her voice. Her speech, a short, monotonous soliloquy, shrivelled away and left the room with a sigh.

Although she was finished, her eyes stayed unmoving. Clint touched her shoulders tentatively, and she shivered.

"Is it gone?" he asked as her gaze found its way to the floor. She was motionless for a moment, then sighed shakily and ran her fingers through her hair.

 _ **Okay, so that was a little snippet of something I had an idea about.  
If you'd like me to write more, please let me know!**_


	2. Chapter 2

A cupful of light spilled across the moorland outside and wove oranges into an otherwise midnight blue skyline. It was an unusual sunrise, but the pinks and golds it dragged from below the horizon did not seem to care for its strangeness. The birds, however, were slightly more cautious that morning. Their song was quiet, apprehensive - a scattering of notes that slid carefully from the trees and slipped into open windows. The winds of the moor shivered slightly at their presence.

It was the fourth time that something like this had happened, so the recovery was not as brutal.

Natasha listened to the birdsong as it rolled in from outside. She cast her eye to the laptop screen in front of her in a vain hope that it had finished loading, but, as was inevitable, it had not. Her hand motioned to unlock a drawer in the desk and pulled out a notepad. A pen lay centred in the pool of light that had settled on the bottom right of the desk; the lamp responsible for the pool perching on a corner. It looked down at the brightness it had thrown out with a certain shame, and Natasha adjusted it so that it looked a little happier. She smiled.

The spy picked up the pen and scraped it across a line once or twice to test its reliability. Writing her thoughts only for a brief moment, she let boredom settle in a little and resorted to doodling on the corner of her page. A small drawing of a bird formed there, scribbled but recognisable. Before she knew it, little sketches of birds were making their way down the page. By now, the hacking software had fully loaded up on her computer, but she doodled aimlessly for a few more minutes. It was good to let her mind settle, she thought.

 _"Natasha."_

She stopped, but did not turn around. Her hair, falling in curls at her chin, was residing at the bottom of her line of sight. Experience meant that her ears tuned automatically to the activity of the room, and though her hands were now still, they threatened to move to the gun strapped to the underside of the desk. Very slowly, Natasha moved to pull shut her laptop. Her fingers brushed the surface, and -

 _"Nata-"_

"Nat?"

She lingered there for a moment, let her ears map out what was happening. A gentle sigh accompanied her hand falling back to her side, and she turned to see Clint standing in the doorway.

"You ready to get started?" he asked. Her composure settled back into her veins, and she replied 'yes' without hesitation.

* * *

It was a simple program that she had designed herself. Loading it up took time, because it searched for as many networks it could gain good access to before it rendered the interface. Through a strong internet connection, the user could gain access to any software that was active on the victim's computer - handy, if the information was lying just behind what the internet itself hid. Getting into an organisation's intranet was slightly more difficult, but possible with some extra lines of code. But the extra function that made it _particularly_ handy was the general network connection it was able to make, through phone lines and security cameras. Passwords were easy enough to bypass, and so surveillance was made far easier than it had been before. Plus, having it all on one program that could exist in many different copies meant that it could be moved from location to location on nothing but a USB stick. And, with a little bit of effort, Natasha had written it so that it was hidden even on the portable storage unit in the first place. Sure, the layers could be undone. But it had enough security measures to protect it before that could happen. There were, after all, more pressing matters to attend to.

"Can you adjust sensor 2?"

Natasha's eyes trailed after the cursor on the screen. She was opening several menus with ease, making tiny edits that could possibly aid the situation.

"Sure." said a voice which had already left the room. Clint was in mission mode, and most of what he was doing was far ahead of what he was thinking about. After about a minute, he returned to the room.

"Sensor shouldn't be giving you problems." he said with a troubled tone. He rested a warm hand on her shoulder and she looked up at him. Here, in the dim light, her face was inquisitive with its half-shade. A slight frown pulled at her lips and she returned to the screen.

"Device is external then. Dammit." She pushed a fallen lock of hair behind her ear. "And here was me thinking it was going to be simple for a change..."

Clint pointed to a corner of the screen, which subsequently opened up as a separate menu.

"Damn, forgot it did that." he grumbled, before adding "This level here should be higher. You're not using the right encryption."

"Says who?" Natasha challenged.

"Says me." Clint replied, pulling back his hand.

"It works fine," she continued. "And it's nicer to run."

Clint shot her a look, which she somehow caught in her peripheral, and she smiled at his irritation. She tapped the mouse twice and stood up, the ties of her sweatshirt swaying slightly. These clothes (or at least, variations upon them), were the small comfort she could afford on missions. Her hands slipped into the pockets of her shorts and she left the room. The archer took a swift look around the study, and, although he knew it was empty, braved a short laugh at his comedy. His fingertips were accustomed to the computer by now and he had no hesitation in opening the encryption settings. When he had changed them accordingly, he sat back and waited for Natasha to come back in.

She leant in the doorway of the kitchen. By now, dawn had broken, and the quiet caution of the birds had been over-ridden by the waking of the rest of the world, which had no time to not be oblivious to the odd way the sun had risen. The glass of orange juice swirled in her hands.

It annoyed her.

How could everything carry on like this? There were signs, more signs than were often picked up, and everything was ignored, because 'life must go on'. Something was happening, a new dawn welcoming it, but even changes the sky would not wake the people with their heads in the clouds. And they would live happily like this, and even if they knew what could happen to them, she could ask them, and they'd say 'but it won't happen to me'. And maybe, this time, it wouldn't. But after everything before, after New York and after Ultron, there was still no change to caution. This time, alongside all the missions and surveillance before, would _probably_ be on her own level. But people might just be watching. There would always be collateral damage, because people always surround themselves in, well, _people_ ; and yet, faced with a crashing alien ship coming straight towards them, most people would simply pull out a phone and say 'smile'.  
People always thought they were invincible.  
Natasha knew they weren't.  
A little bit of orange juice hit her sock and the spy realised that her hand was shaking slightly. It did not surprise her too much; last time involved a lot of throwing up and a slight tremor for about 3 days.  
There were rules to this world she sometimes found herself in. As it had a habit of being hard to remember, she had written some of the constants down. First of all, upon entrance, she would always step. Walking was how she envisioned herself getting there, even if she had been lying down when she 'left'. She had the feeling that it wouldn't work if she didn't walk. And so she would find her self standing, on a beach or on a plain or on a hill. There were never signs of life there, but there was often a slight wind. The black sand of the most recent time had been a first.  
It was a planet, she was sure. And it had been lived on before, she was certain. And so it was now dead, and no grass grew on the hillsides, and no trees decorated the edge of the plain. There was no water because the heat had sucked it up into the sky, and though she rarely saw it, Natasha knew there was a nearby star which beamed electromagnetic radiation to bounce around on the dead surface. The strength of what she perceived as heat would trace back to this sun, and though there might not be a strong enough atmosphere to block out the especially harmful rays, an 'air' there cushioned her where she walked. But the air never let her _breathe_ , not properly. She'd been on mountain tops and under oceans. Even there, the different altitudes let her adapt. These 'rules' (or perhaps more aptly, _guidelines_ ) did not seem to follow the laws of life on Earth.

"Hurry up, Nat." came a voice from the study.

She did not answer.

The clock's big and small hands took a millimetre wide leap from where they sat, each at a mark before XII and VII. They took it there, locked in their position for however many seconds it would take for them to settle again at 7, to stop functioning as the hands of a clock. From the moment they were put into place, their purpose was to run in circles around the face of an inexpensive time piece, and at their placement, their very fate, became to loop the numbers on the watch ever 12 hours for a couple of years. But the hands of _this_ watch made the decision to ignore this destiny. Instead, they enjoyed the comfort of sitting still for more than their allotted minute, and they stared up at the glassy eyes of their owner, watching to see what he would do about the whole situation.

Clint stared down at the clock hands on his watch. They had stopped moving. He shrugged and checked the time on the computer instead.

It had been 12 minutes since she had left.

 _It wouldn't happen again so soon. It wouldn't._

The first time Clint had found her was the second time it had happened. They'd come in from a rescue op, and some crazed idiot had slashed at his leg - so deep that it had cut down to the bone. Temporary stitches held the wound together, but he needed proper medical attention. Well, that was the goal - right at that second, he just needed a safe place for the night.  
It had been a few hours since they had reached the attic. An infection had seeped into the cut - dirt from the roof, most likely - and thus a fever was growing inside of him. The sickness had not been awakened fully but it was enough to shake the archer from his rest. And as he looked up, in the dim candle light, he saw her. There was a gap between the two beams that formed the classic triangle shape, and from it leaked in the shattered remains of starlight. Through the day, she had been decisive, controlling; she had been herself. Now it looked as if Natasha could barely stand, and she remained there like a puppet in the silence, waiting for her master to drop the strings. Clint had seen her at her best and her worst, and she had seen him at those times too, but this was something worse. It was something _new._  
And then, as he had expected, she had dropped to the floor. She'd cut her hand as she had fallen, and a trail of blood followed her from the beams to the floorboards. He limped over to help her, for he knew that he would die right there without her, and then he had checked her pulse.  
Nothing.  
Panic was not something that usually hung around on Clint's expression. But even Natasha's breathing had stopped, and as far as he could tell, she was dead. And it had been sudden, brutally so. He'd held her as his brain calculated possible exit routes. There was no way that he could stay here now, no-one to look after him.  
 _He could not leave her.  
_ She wouldn't have left him if she were in his shoes. Or, rather, what remained of his shoes - the trainers he had worn for weeks by that point were little more than duct-taped shreds. Clint had looked down at her. His heart had beaten furiously and his head had swirled, and his mind had pulsed with an anger that cursed the world for leaving him alone, more alone than he had ever been before. The quiet of the room was not broken but he had rocked her limp body in his frustration.

"Shit!"

Her scream shook his mind clear. He had laughed, that was what he remembered. But tears stained his face and as he had looked at her again, the shock on her face scared him into silence.

"What the fuck are you crying about?"

That was what she had asked him. And then she had passed out, drifted into an unconsciousness that was familiar to Clint, and he had fallen asleep next to her.

Clint was leaning over the computer now, with a blank expression. His memory of that time was strangely clear, though he couldn't remember much of what had happened next apart from her half carrying him to the nearest medical facility. From what she had told him, it had been 3 months since the last time. It would be another month and a half before the next.

"Nat? You okay?"

Clint's head tilted slightly as he adjusted his stance. The light, now almost fully grown, wrapped around his chin and made soft reflections on his hearing aid. Very carefully, he switched off the laptop and removed the device that the program was housed in. His fingers found their way to his firearm and he drew it as he was walking away.

"Nat!" he called.

She emerged from the kitchen, apparently unamused by Clint's cation, and raised an eyebrow at him. He lowered his gun and she walked past.

"Why did you turn it off?" she grumbled as she found her way to the study.

"I was worried!" said Clint with arms outstretched.

"You could do something far better with your time than worry, Barton."

"Like what?"

"Like set up my tracker again." she turned and smiled a smile that made him uneasy. "Or you could finally check the ammo stores, like you said you would."

Clint shook his head, scoffed and walked out again. Within minutes, the software Natasha had designed was running, bleeping every so often to alert her to something new. It didn't take long for Clint to wander back in, and he pulled up a chair to watch her work.

"You almost got it?" he asked.

"Not almost. Now."

* * *

In a desert of black sand, a figure turned to the sun. Her body sparkled with a faint purple, but apart from that, she blended into the grains below her. Her skin, if it was skin at all, was crumbling and cracked, like the remains of burnt food on glowing embers. The breath she drew was plentiful and full-filing, the nutrients it brought her tumbling down the tunnels that were her veins.

She whispered a word, and it echoed across the realms.

When it had found the point where there were no more realities to bounce off, a silence returned, clouding over ghosts and the remnants of ideas. In a world close by it, at the break of dawn in a distant country, the birdsong fell silent.

 _ **So this one was quite a bit longer -  
**_ _ **Can't guarantee they'll always be this length, but I'll aim for it  
Thanks for all the interest so far!**_


	3. Chapter 3

The external device they were looking for contained information - documents, rather than code - that presented evidence for a possible threat against a multi-billionaire.  
S.H.I.E.L.D., the resurrected organisation, that is, had acquainted themselves with Sophia Kai Melanthios, who acted as one of the supporting technicians for a lot of (expensive) equipment. In a way, she was much like Tony Stark, but with a little less genius and a lot less _annoying._ By any means, she was a valued member of the support team, and it was preferable if she were kept alive. Of course, there must have been a few for reasons why she was considered such a priority. The bonus of being a spy was that you tended to find a few of these reasons.

From traces they had gathered when the device had been attached to the house's main computer, a draft of the intel had been developed. It was by no means extensive but offered much in the way of timetabling. Tracking the computer itself had also proved helpful, when the movements of the individuals involved with the device were often publicised on various platforms. The daily life of the delinquents in question was noted down in bullet points.

Around the page where she had jotted the schedules, little bird drawings were scattered.

"Is it always the same coffee shop?"

Natasha spun to look Clint in the eye. He was wearing clothes that he probably thought passed as casual, and had even swapped out his favourite sunglasses for a pair more on trend. "Are you questioning the competency of my tracker?"

He threw up his hands in defence.

"Are you gonna get dressed any time soon? Perps are meant to be there in 20 minutes."

Natasha grumbled and dug into her pockets. From one of them, she produced a set of keys, which she threw to Clint as she stood up.

"Bring the car around, would you?" Despite her being far smaller than him, she held by far the most authority in the room. Her chin was angled slightly up, and her lips lay half locked in a syllable, as if to say "I am ready to act".

He smirked and jingled the keys on his exit.

The singular bedroom of the apartment they were staying in was cramped and smelled of damp. Like much of the place, a small section of the room was highlighted; a functioning lamp, a clear surface and a clean mirror gave way to clean and usable utensils that were dotted around the corner table. The rest of the space was cluttered and barely clean, with bedsheets that stunk of sweat and dirt and curtains that were moth-eaten at the edges. It was only temporary, after all, and it felt better not to indulge in the comforts too much. A pair of handcuffs were splayed out beside a prescription of some sleeping pills (addressed to Mr J Smith), and Natasha shuddered as she brushed past them to reach the wardrobe. Daylight filtered in through the curtains which were permanently drawn, and little eaten away holes made light circles on the opposing wall.  
From the wardrobe, the spy found a clean blouse and some jeans, which she pulled on with ease. The trembling had stopped by now, and she wasn't too concerned about what had happened. Her reflection in the clean mirror in the corner was of someone tired and shocked. Her hand automatically made her way to the makeup bottles and brushes there, and bit by bit, she layered up her face, to bring it out a little better. She grabbed a pair of sunglasses, tied her hair in a high ponytail, and left for the door.

When she got to the car - a less than glamorous Mazda 2 - she pulled the car door open and jumped in. Clint smiled at her and drove out.

"Come on, let's go and do your damn risk assessment."

* * *

The coffee shop lay in the outskirts of town, but it was cleaner and tidier than expected. The inside of it glowed a warm orange that contrasted the rain outside, though the gentle drum of the precipitation could be heard on the skylights in the ceiling.

"Table closest to far left window." Clint noted, and Natasha followed his gaze discreetly to observe.

"Fred and Velma over there? Really?"

"I know the type." assured the archer. "I think they're waiting on someone though."

"All right birdie-boy. You gonna be a little more subtle with that tracker of yours?" She indicated his phone with a nod of her head, and he quickly drew it back into himself when he realised how awkwardly outward it appeared. "They haven't got it with them. I'd know if they did."

"They're middle men, Nat. They get paid to leave valuables behind."

It was evident that the laptop in the _man's_ possession did not count as a valuable.

"Would be a little more helpful if they didn't follow orders so much..."

Clint sighed and took a swig of his coffee. "We can interrogate them if you prefer."

"Now?"

"Yeah now."

"How long ago did you join S.H.I.E.L.D. Barton?"

"Can't remember that far back." he chuckled.

"Can you remember if they gave you _any_ training whatsoever?"

He glared at her with widened eyes. "I'm serious, we could go over right now."

"And are you going to deal with your missing person? And the people who come to collect the product? And the assassins who are gonna speed up their plan?"

"Hey," he said, taking a hand off his coffee cup. "I'm not the one being impatient."

"Any confirmation yet?"

"That the coffee is better than back at the pad? Yes I should think so."

"We don't _have_ coffee at the 'pad'." Natasha stated. "We don't even really have a 'pad'."

Clint scoffed and drank more of his coffee. "Why did we bring sunglasses anyway? Couldn't even take the good ones."

"You mean the only tech present from Stark that you've ever kept?"

"Those ones, yes."

"3 o'clock, opposite sidewalk."

Clint looked over the rim of his coffee cup. Steam swirled around his vision but the smell tempted him into staying. "Looks like our girl. Daphne's joining the crew, I see."

"Did you see that tattoo as well?" Natasha prompted.

"What, looking for a birthday present for yourself?"

"Gang tattoo, Hawkeye."

With a slight squint, Clint confirmed the observation with a faint 'ah'. "Are they using the Wi-Fi? You can -"

"On it." assured Natasha, who was tapping rapidly at her phone. "They move around too much to be sure, but it looks like two locations to check for base."

"Got it." The archer interjected. "Disused art studio and old church look like a good bet."

"Right, finish your coffee. They'll move by the end of the week, so we'll go tomorrow."

* * *

Clint stopped on the way back to get more coffee, and mulled over it in the car.

"How can we, as a society, go from a cup of such beautiful coffee to a paper container of filth? I don't get it!"

"You wanted coffee so bad..."

Natasha was at the wheel, taking corners that were perhaps a little sharper than the road engineers had intended. She was focussed on driving but Clint knew that behind her highly concentrated vision lay a composure that would adjust to any situation, and fast, too. He thought at first that he was making up what he saw - the lightning fast movements, the impossible calculations - they were all something he hoped to see in himself, and so maybe counterfeited in another. But even Captain America saw it in her. Steve, Sam Wilson and Natasha had been taking someone in, when a shooter landed on car's roof and ripped the informant out from his seat. He had shot at them all several times before taking the wheel - literally. When Steve examined what remained of the car, he found bullet holes where he, Sam and her had been - he realised that, in a few seconds, Natasha had avoided a bullet herself, pushed Sam out of the way of being shot and then jumped into Steve's lap to pull him to safety too. Clint knew that he could beat anyone at archery, the vast majority in a fight, and several people in a game of chess. But he couldn't beat her. Not really.

What happened _there_?

She would speak of other worlds, of no air, of darkness. The memory would scuttle away at any provocation, and Natasha herself would be badly weakened after it happened, but she spoke clear as day of what she saw. It sounded... horrible. Neither of them had lived the perfect life before, but what she described was isolation. And he imagined her feeling as he felt when someone ripped out his hearing aids, or if they stopped working at night. Suddenly, there would be nothing to hear but the echoes of thoughts - and, moreover, the vivid images of things-gone-wrong. He imagined his first few missions. He imagined Loki.  
His eyes settled on her, and then darted to his coffee as the car seemed to tip to one side. The funny thing was, she was probably one of the best drivers he knew. She just had a funny way of showing it.

Back in the flat, Clint rooted around in the fridge for something to put in his sandwich. Natasha chewed on a Snickers bar, walking to and fro from the kitchen to the bedroom to equip herself for the next day's events. She hummed something or other cheerily as she carried guns and knives across, and when she was done, stayed in the bedroom. Clint stayed in the study and planned his positions on the roofs around the locations.

The evening dragged on and eventually gave way to night-time. The small and big hands of a clock rolled away hours, except for on Clint's watch, where they had fallen still.

Natasha awoke, startled, with a soundless yelp. Once she had clambered out of bed, she slipped out of her day clothes and pulled on her sweatshirt.

"Clint." The archer had his head tipped back on the rim of the support, and he snored infrequently to the sound of a whirring computer. Natasha stared at him and calmly shut down the laptop. She pushed the sleeping man's shoulder and he gave a loud, defiant snore in return. "Hey! Barton."

"Huh?" he yawned.

"Come on." she prompted, pulling him to a standing position. "Let's get to bed."

He followed her out of the study, but stopped in the hallway, sinking to the floor. His mumbling was incoherent, and it was apparent that he would not be getting to the bedroom on his own accord, but Natasha had no motivation to drag him there herself. So she went into the bedroom for a moment, pulling the duvet off the bed, and returned to tuck it around the pair of them, settling on his shoulder.

* * *

In the morning, Clint blinked awake to find Natasha sleeping on his lap. The duvet was splayed out around them, covering about 3 limbs in total and a good portion of torso. As he shuffled slightly, pretending that he could move her without her knowing, she fired into wakefulness.

"What time is it?" she mumbled.

Clint wriggled out from under the covers and found the kitchen clock, which determined the time to be quarter past 7. When he returned to the hall, he saw Natasha had retreated to the bedroom, making the bed. He wandered into the bathroom and jumped into the shower.

They mobilised at 8am.

Natasha knew where Clint was, but could not see him from where she stood. Her black catsuit was quite apparent outside, but would aid her within the building, which lay still under the cover of darkness. The James Atkinson Art Studio was crumbling a little at the sides, but seemed structurally sound enough to host an operation like this. There were very few tall buildings around the outside, and so Clint mainly aimed for position atop the building itself. Luckily, there were classic large skylights embedded in the ceiling, and so, if they were opened slightly, it was pretty simple to survey the entire building from several different angles at once.

Natasha slipped in through a side door with ease. Inside, the furniture did not adhere to the its past, but the odd easel and the openness of the rooms gave a good indication of what the building had been. Newspaper clippings and scribbled notes littered the floor towards the back of the large room and a group of tattered sofas huddled around a toppled over chest of drawers, like a campfire.

A clattering came from one of the smaller rooms and Natasha slunk down behind one of the sofas.

"I think I found Shaggy, Hawkeye."

"He doesn't look anything like Shaggy, Nat."

"Well I could hardly say he's the dog, could I?"

"I don't know. Seems rather fitting to me."

"Are there any others?" she asked, seriously now.

"Guy came up from the basement - there's only you and him on the first floor but I can't take a guess for any lower levels."

The clattering gave way to the click of a door, and Natasha's hand dropped to her gun.

"Is anybody in here?" came the voice from the other side of the room. It was thick, low, and clouded in a heavy accent.

Natasha stood and grinned. Her weapon was raised and the man stared at it intently.

"Hey beautiful," she greeted. "You got something for me?"

The man trembled slightly and then made for the gun. The spy ducked and caught his leg as he ran, pushing him flat on the concrete flooring.

"This could be easy, Picasso."

"I don't know what you talk about!" he shouted in defence, followed by some desperate struggling. Natasha pulled him up and against the wall.

"You gonna tell me where the chip is?"

"I don't tell anything, bitch."

She fired a warning shot into the window on her right. The remaining shell clattered on the ground, alongside the sound of cracking glass. The man shrieked in response.

"See, now _that_ _'s_ Shaggy." commentated Clint from above. "Movement from below, Tasha."

"I got it." she assured him, flipping the gun in her hand. She locked sight with her prisoner. "Next one's in your leg." she smiled.

"When my people get here, they're going to shoot you right here," he pointed at her lower abdomen. "Where you make babies. They beat you until you are a piece of meat, and then they will hang you by your shoelaces from the highest building they can find. I know you. Natasha Romanova. Filthy bitch."

"Sure honey." She fired two shots into his thigh, and the man erupted into screams. The other man came from the smaller room, slightly less confident by the looks of it, and put his hands up in defence. Natasha stood up and strode over, smirking at the man who now stumbled backwards down the basement stairs.

"Your friend is going to call the rest of your gang." she said matter-of-factly."So you're going to show me where you keep the device."

The man, smaller and more wiry than the other, scrambled down into the dark room and pulled a briefcase from under a table. He opened it, removed a laptop, and pulled an SD card out of a reader. When he handed it over, hand shaking as he did so, Natasha used the butt of her gun to hit him over the head. The spy emerged from the room with the man slung over her shoulder. She was met by Clint aiming an arrow at the more confident man.

"Alright Nat, let's go."

"Hold on." she said. Clint had already cleaned up the mess, and the gunshot wound of the man's leg dribbled blood on a wad of newspapers instead of the floor. "What do you use the church for?"

The man spat at her boots and Natasha pressed the front of one foot down into his leg. He screamed and she scoffed. "Alright then." she sighed. "Let's get to the Mystery Van."

" _Mystery Machine._ " Clint corrected.

"Yeah whatever."

 _ **Another long one again -  
Sorry that it's taken so much time!  
I'm on school holidays now, so hopefully updates are a bit more frequent.**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Okay, so I mentioned Ultron before, but I've not had much experience writing in the new Avengers team.  
**_ _ **So for this fanfic in particular, even though the general events of Ultron did happen,  
I'll stick to writing the Avengers as the original team  
Just letting you guys know**_

It had been a week.

The clenching feeling locked around her lungs told Natasha that she had come back to the other world. Cracks in her skin grew wider as the heat shrivelled anything on the surface, any remainders of the 'world before' skittering away to escape their inevitable wither.

"Hello?"

 _"YOU HANG A QUESTION WITHOUT LOGIC."_

The Question didn't seem to voice itself from any particular direction.

"I do not." asserted Natasha with a certain distaste. Memory had prompted her expectation of a response, but though the reminiscence was stronger this time, it had not warned her of what sort of response to expect. A mental notation was made of the Question's metaphor, and calculations whirred behind her eyes as she formed more syllables.

" _Why_ am I here?" The words corroded her mouth and throat like acid, and she realised that it was new, to speak as herself in this world.

" _YOUR SEARCH FOR REASON IS NOT CENTRAL TO YOUR QUESTION."_

Natasha huffed, and turned to walk. She did care about _why_ she was there, but what fascinated her more was _how_ she got there, where _there_ was and _how_ this world worked. More than anything, she wanted to understand what she was faced with - or, rather, was she was not-quite-faced-but-still-kind-of-met-with.

Besides, the 'why' of things generally came at the end of such a story. It was increasingly futile to think anything else.

The ground under her had taken the appearance of a salt flat, but consisted of greying, dusty grains of which the top layer was moulding to the underside of her feet. A wavering haze, the result of the warmth, gave way to what should have been mirages, but there were more vague shapes than distant palm trees by the sudden loss of semantic content.  
Her movement was accompanied by a faint buzzing noise in her head.  
This was self-provided, a solution to the noiselessness that rode forth on the heat, and was not difficult to summon, for it had been done often before. In fact, the sound, a thin layer of gravel under every unpleasant conversation, had been enlisted by Natasha since she was very young. It was a good way to regulate breathing, to clear the head and, well, to forget.

And so she walked.

The air felt heavy to her, and it faded outwards to a darkness that the buzzing would not drown out. Here, in the middle of nothingness, came again the calling.

 _"Natasha."_

Traversing the land became more difficult as the plain stretched on. Her feet felt weighted and left deep footprints trailing behind her, a scattered line of them reaching out to infinity in the direction she had come from. The faded shapes in the distance grew larger as she approached them, and it became clear that they were not mirages after all, but instead the remains of buildings. Etching closer, the salt-flat ground turned to soil, dried and dusty, and with some difficulty, Natasha clambered up a bank surrounding the flat to get over to the ground behind it. The dust found its way up her body and into her nostrils, and a solitary sneeze populated the air for a moment. There were no plants, no animals - not even carcasses. From where she was, all there was to see were the remnants of some kind of housing.  
Crumbled walls hid a grid network of rotten floor supports that hosted small towers of built-up dirt. The decay of the wood boards suggested that detritivores and decomposers had some part to play in the past, but now the building was bereft of resident, microbial or otherwise. A faint wind whistled with an eerie noise just short of silence, and the whispers of civilisation shuffled quietly under the dust. There was nothing personal, no furniture or belongings.

All the memories had gone.

Natasha had gathered that composure was her friend in this world. Ignorance here, even of the things that would usually blare red sirens in her head, would keep her safer than panic.

There was a smaller ruin somewhere in the distance. Calmly, she trudged on, although the slightly better surface did little to lift the weight off her legs. The light around the stones - older than those of the house - had faded into the dark border that seemed to encircle this part of the world, and much of the area was too dark to observe in detail. This seemed not to be a building, but instead some kind of cultural or religious site. Piles of stones that could once have been arcs glared at a centre podium, where grooves in the rock indicated a language long forgotten.

The planet was dead, but something was calling her name.

 _"Natasha."_

She ignored the beckoning, for it sounded too much like a teacher calling out a student. A cold finger traced the inscriptions in the stone and, for a second, it sparked a glorious purple.

" _Turn around."_

The command was ignored.

 _"Turn... around."_ the voice demanded. Natasha's reluctance was punished by a crippling blow to the chest. As she tried to subdue her body's demand for air, the darkness from the edges of her vision blanketed the ruins and all that was around it. The figure, no name assigned to it, rose from the dust and hissed at the body on the floor. Natasha clambered to her feet and counted the beats of her heart.

"What are you?" she asked tentatively.

" _I'm... closer than you think."_ the voice teased.

But the grip on Natasha's shoulder was expected, and instead of cowering away, the spy drew the feeling right back towards herself. For a moment, the figure became physical, and she didn't miss the chance to launch herself on its back and pull it to the floor. It squealed in surprise but quickly dissipated back into its ghost-like form.

And then - and then she woke.

* * *

A small gasp came from the body under the bed covers.

"Oh Jesus Christ." said a startled Clint. "Are you okay? Nat, you've been gone almost an hour."

Natasha tugged at the duvet to pull it up to her shoulders. She let a hand fall down on the pillow beside her and noticed the texture on her fingertips. Dust, a thin layer of grey powder, had worked its way into the grooves there.

"I was about to call Stark, dammit." grumbled Clint. "You know you stop breathing when it happens? I don't think I'd find a hospital that would trust you were still alive."

He found his way to her side of the bed and checked her pulse.

A little of the dust rubbed off on his hand.

They'd moved into a motel closer to where the assassins were meant to be, following the intelligence that the device had offered. Technically, it was still being decrypted, but a general location could be determined through the earlier parts of one decoded document. The schedule of the crooks' probable attack was being constantly worked at from several locations, but could only be accurately accessed through a private network hosted on the device. It was amazing what external storage could do nowadays. It was rather less amazing that the main device was entrusted to fairly unskilled agents, Clint thought. The men they had captured (one of whom had _kindly_ indicated where the SD card was) were deposited into the hands of the local police department, who wanted them for minor crimes. It was enough to swap out the card for an empty one - something that could be programmed to access the same network as the one before through the computer it was situated in. This way, there shouldn't have been too much trouble about the missing card - until 'Shaggy' and 'Scooby' were bailed out, of course.

"Natasha?"

Clint spoke from a laptop he had set up on a desk by the window. On it ran the tracking program, alongside a decryption service that they had borrowed from S.H.I.E.L.D. He had let her sleep for an hour or two, taking the time to sharpen knives and clean firearms. Now he searched through files they had downloaded, and tried to report his findings to his partner, who rubbed her temples in attempt to focus.

"We've been running this thing on and off for 5 days. Maybe we should try this another way."

Her voice was quiet but seemed determined to slice through the air as its previous.

"Well we had to move halfway through." argued Clint. "You know how temperamental this baby gets - it'll get there eventually."

"Sure Hawk-guy."

The archer sighed. He let a moment pass, and listened as the air was filled by the soft whirring of computer fans. "I can call in Stark if you want. Maybe he can help figure out what happens when... you know..."

"No matter what Tony Stark can build, he won't get inside my head." Natasha asserted. "I'm getting somewhere with it, Clint. I can figure it out myself, don't doubt me on that."

"It's a whole lot easier to fight something when you know what it is."

Natasha caught his eyes and watched a memory flicker over them. "Hey," she started. "Don't steal my limelight."

Clint sighed. "It's been happening more often. For longer, too. It's not good for you, Tasha."

"Are you telling me to go on a diet or something? Because it'll be much easier if you just tell me straight."

"I'm serious."

"What do you want me to do, Clint?"

"Tell me what happens and let me try and work it out."

"I can't remember it myself, how am I meant to tell you?"

"Well, do you think you can choose to go back yourself? We could, I don't know, devise an experiment or something."

Natasha let the offer hang in the air until it seemed to tinge with stupidity. "We have work to do, Barton." she said, striding over to the laptop. Her fingers worked at the keyboard as she brought up the files they had retrieved successfully.

"How many documents have we got left to decrypt?" she asked.

"About 15. They change slightly every hour or so, so it takes a while to sort through every copy for relevant info. Any idea who we're looking for yet?"

"Too many contributors to know for sure. We're in the right area, but it could be anyone within a 10 mile radius."

"What do you say we go for a drive around the neighbourhood?" encouraged Clint. "We've been in this dump for 3 days - it'll be good to change the scenery."

"Why not?"

* * *

The sun had settled on the late afternoon with a certain warmth. It was sharp too - sharp enough to prompt an appearance from Clint's 'casual' sunglasses, at least - and it lit up dust specks that littered the dash.

Natasha yawned as the car took its third lap around the town.

"Stop at the next place that sells food, would ya?"

A quiet rippled through the car, and sunlight filtered in though the side windows as they turned a corner. All was quiet. Until -

" _Natasha."_

Clint jolted and the car swerved out and then in again very suddenly. When he was adamant that he had regained control, he flicked his head so that his eyes met his companion's.

"You heard it too?" she asked with raised eyebrows. The archer jerked his head back to face the road and swallowed heavily. He pulled the car into a space behind a small store and stumbled out onto the pavement.

"What was it?" he demanded as he paced around the Mazda.

"Don't get paranoid, Katniss."

"Well _someone_ ' _s_ got to act concerned!"

"Could you hear it before?" Natasha asked with genuine interest.

"There's a before?!"

"Get on with it, Barton, I'm getting hungry."

With a moment of hesitation, he returned to the car. They drove in silence, each with a vague superstition that they would hear the whisper again if they did not disturb the air, and only stopped when they found a cheap restaurant, which seemed slightly classier than the McDonald's they had just passed.

"I'm calling the team in." said Clint after they'd ordered spaghetti. Natasha reached out and gripped his wrist.

"We're doing this ourselves." she snapped. "The Avengers don't have anything. I've looked in the archives and there's nothing."

"Not everything's in the archives."

She released her grip and sat back. She knew that he wouldn't let her get away with it, but he would not threaten her with replacement, for in his mind, there could be no such thing. "We finish this first."

"If we get all the documents tonight, we'll drive out to wherever tomorrow. Someone's meant to be on protection for this billionaire, right?"

"Should be. I'll check who it is later."

They paused for a second while their pasta arrived. It was clear by the texture that it was slightly overcooked, and the sauce took the consistency of that from a store-bought jar rather than a home-made topping. When the waitress left, they ate a little before they resumed their conversation.

"D'you get anywhere on that church?" Natasha asked.

"Empty by the time I got there." started Clint. "Couple of things laid out for squatters, but very little of interest."

The sound of chewing replaced his speech for a few seconds.

"I took pictures." he added, to try and catch her interest. He saw calculations whirr somewhere behind her eyes and was assured that she would visit them later.

Another hour or so of evening rolled on as the spies went from dinner to dessert. They would often eat out on missions, but it was mostly during undercover operations, and so this presented a slight change from the takeaways they would usually indulge in in their accommodation. Though the spaghetti left much to hope for, the ice cream was nice enough. Natasha handed a few notes over to the waitress who returned one of them with a smile.

"That's over-paying me, ma'am."

Clint took snatched the bill from Natasha's fingers and handed it straight back. "I thought it was just the right amount."

Natasha winked at the waitress and turned to Clint when she was gone.

"Come on," he said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin. "Let's go see if this chip's decrypted."

 _ **It's great to see so much interest picking up -  
**_ _ **Hope I'm not being too confusing.  
**_ _ **Thanks for all the reviews!**_


	5. Chapter 5

"Two minutes!"

Clint could hear the call from where he stood in the bathroom. The razor in his hand cleared lanes of snow-like foam that covered the lower parts of his face.

"Don't click anything, whatever you do!" he shouted back once the blade was safely out of the way. "We've been waiting almost a week for this to be done properly, so if you break it, there'll be hell to pay."

His hand worked quicker around the contours of his face, and he cleared his heavy stubble without any cuts.

"All of it?" he asked when he returned to the main room, towel in hand.

Natasha's face, lit up by the screen light, bore a stretched out smile. She typed eagerly, and only after she triumphantly hit enter did she look up at Clint's face.

"About 20 minutes before it changes again, but we can see everything."

"Can I?"

He motioned towards the computer and dropped his hand to hover over the keyboard.

"Wait your turn." Natasha scolded, batting away the hand. He retreated sadly, like a scorned dog.

* * *

The room fell darker as the night reached its peak, but the change did not concern the two bodies that inhabited it. A bed spring bent awkwardly as weight on it was shifted, and it creaked in protest.

"Something's wrong here." said Natasha to Clint. She sat cross legged towards the headboard of the bed, the horizontal metal bar reaching about halfway up her back. Clint was at the desk, using the bedside lamp to illuminate the surface.

"What?" he asked, somewhat absent-mindedly. His focus lay on the document on the laptop screen, which was dense with compacted writing.

"Well, we tracked down the external device, and found - what? - documents, right?"

"What we expected to find."

"But no _concrete_ schedules?"

Clint spun round to catch her eye.

"There's locations and times. The ones that pointed us here, for example." he said.

"With so many people, you'd want the key date posted somewhere, wouldn't you?"

"I guess. You can communicate that through other ways though; if they're all split into groups like Mystery Inc. back there, then you only need one person to relay that information."

Natasha took a moment to think and tipped her head back against the wall.

"Where did you pull up info on the disused church?" she asked eventually.

"Used the connection from phone to the coffee shop's network, why?"

"Do any of the documents we've recovered involve either location we assumed they'd be at?"

"Hold on," Clint said, typing at the computer. "Let me run keywords."

After some scrolling, he pulled up the results. "5 involving the Church we're looking at. Nada on the studio."

"Can I see the pictures?"

He passed over his phone. "Nobody'd been there for a couple days, I'd say."

Natasha zoomed in and out of the photo on the screen. It was the remainder of a squatter's dwelling, the blankets and clothing long gone but the mattress still there. But there were scraps of metal thrown around too. It reminded her of parts of the Avengers' tower.

"Majority of the documents were research on our billionaire, right?" she asked without looking up.

"That's not unexpected though."

"Maybe not."

Clint scanned her eyes for her meaning. A vague conclusion brewed in his mind.

"So what are you trying to say?"

Natasha met his gaze.

"Does this seem like a normal hit to you?"

"Well -"

"It's not a hit squad, Clint. It's a search party."

Both of their eyes lit up with the same realisation.

"Who did you say was on protective duty?" asked the archer.

"Tommy Radcliffe and his crew."

Clint rubbed his cheeks with the palms of his hand. His speech went on with rising frustration.

"Can't be. Radcliffe and his wife went on their honeymoon last week. I was at the bachelor party."

"That's not what the records say."

"Are S.H.I.E.L.D trying to cover their asses for something?"

"Like that's a new thing."

"No-one knows where she is, do they?"

"I think she's been lost for quite a while."

"Shit, Nat! Dammit, I should have spotted this earlier." As he said this, he stood up, catching the underside of the desk as he went and causing it to clang as it slammed back on the floor.

"Teaches you for being paranoid about me." Natasha scoffed.

"So what, it's a race to find her? And then what? Kill her or hide her deeper?"

"Depends. Is she running from S.H.I.E.L.D or to it?"

Clint settled down and pondered the implications.

"Hard to tell." he said eventually. "They didn't ask us to find _her_ , they asked us to find the people planning the attack."

"But there is no attack."

Clint chuckled.

"I guess maybe not on Miss Melanthios."

"So what do _we_ do? Neutralise the threat - on whomever they are planning to attack, if anyone at all - or find the woman?"

Strictly speaking, neither of these plans would go against S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interest. Yet the spies had been recruited to destroy an assassination team, not an entire network set up to find the person that it inferred they'd try to kill. If they were correct in their thoughts, then there would be far more groups than just the support team and the main hit squad. It was clear that there was input on at least the device's content from several different parts of the country, but before, it was presumed to be individuals making the contributions. By the logic that was being applied, these would instead be parties of up to about 10 people - instead of a secluded selection of professionals, it would be a conglomeration of people conducting a nation-wide search for a missing billionaire.

In other words, if they were right, this would change everything.

Of course, their discovery could well be wrong. All of the information they had gathered did not directly contradict the possibility of a planned attack on Sophia Melanthios, nor did it suggest any acquaintance with the woman herself. The mission details given by S.H.I.E.L.D. were accurate enough in that they highlighted the support team for the hypothetical attackers, and there was a strong underlying suggestion that the billionaire, a recruit of theirs, was safely under protection.

But the discrepancies were compelling. And it wasn't as if S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't hidden things from its agents before.

And so there was the question of how to go forward. Technically, as recruits of what was supposed to be the 'good' organisation, there had to be some trust in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s information and decisions on how to proceed. If they discounted this information and their role, then they would effectively freelance their way through the mission. There was no telling which side they would come out on when they found the woman - it was not difficult to disagree with their employers, and if this disagreement followed, and if she had indeed been running _from_ S.H.I.E.L.D rather than _to_ it, then conflict was certain to follow. It was, after all, easy for S.H.I.E.L.D. to beat a competitor of sorts by displaying it as a threat.

 _Did she run?_

 _Did she hide?_

 _Was she kidnapped?_

Clint raised his eyebrows at the woman sat opposite him, a decision made solid in his head.

"Where do your loyalties lie, Natasha Romanoff?" he asked with a hint of mischief in his voice. "With the organisation that enlisted you, or with the stranger on the run?"

"I know where they _should_ lie." she responded with a glint in her eye.

"Me too."

They stared at each other for a few moments longer, then Natasha winked and rolled off of the bed. Clint jumped back onto the desk chair and started typing again, rattling noises coming from under the bed frame. The documents were quickly sorted into two different files named 'sightings' and 'research', and when Natasha resurfaced with a stack of paper, three files and a portable printer, Clint was scanning through the 3rd document in the research file.

"You ever met her?" asked Natasha as she plugged in the printer.

"Seen her around once or twice. Tech is pretty good, even up to Stark's standards. She mainly finishes off the stuff that he gets bored with, I think."

"Yeah, smart lady. Interested in Vision, likes to talk to him."

"Nat."

"Huh?"

"We do this as fast as we can, then we get out."

"This could take months, Hawkeye."

"Not with a head-start like this, it couldn't."

"These guys might be organised, but they haven't found her yet."

"They've got more info than they know how to use."

Natasha shuffled through the rumble of the printer printing a test document until she was close enough to see the screen. She was leaning over, but knew Clint would give up his seat for her in a couple of minutes. Her head tilted down until her line of sight corresponded almost with her companion's, the combination of warm yellow and blue light wrapped around her smug features.

"Then show me it."

* * *

Night, having stayed up long enough with the agents, decided to retreat back into the shadows that would steal it for daytime. The sun carried on its slow routine in defiance, and so the early morning sky was filled with a greyish blue hue that seemed not to break into full colour until the eventual emergence of dawn.

"So, you went to a bachelor party?"

In the distance, the low chirp of a bird enquired about the time sunrise. A quiet chatter ensued, but gave little means of answer.

"Went to, yes." replied Clint through a yawn. "I got kicked out after a few hours."

"What'd you do, fire an arrow at a stripper?"

"No, I threw a few punches..."

"Who at?"

"The groom."

Natasha sniggered and pointed her pen at him. "And you're still friends with that guy?"

"Honestly, I don't think he remembers who it was. Whenever he asks why I left early, I just tell him I - don't laugh at me."

In the past few hours, they had sifted through all the documents on the device, noting down valuable information that stood out from the blocks of research. While Clint was hand-writing shorthand notes (they'd swapped positions after an hour or so), Natasha used her own connections to further the research. Paper and pens were scattered around the room.  
A lot of what S.H.I.E.L.D. had on the billionaire had already been dug up, but parts had been missed out that seemed useful to the two spies. Personal information for example, had been listed but not necessarily scanned over. Melanthios liked visiting the islands just offshore LA, going to the deserts in Arizona - even her occasional visits to the casinos of Las Vegas hinted at possible locations. Some of these were jotted down, others not - yet experience told Natasha and Clint that sometimes, the first place to go to would be the most obscure, the favourite spot in a park or the resting place of a family member. These things required looking into the subtext of things, because they would rarely be written down.  
Despite her unusual name, Miss Melanthios had not travelled abroad apart from business trips organised by the organisation, so it was likely that she would stay somewhere in the country. At least the search party had come to the same conclusion.

"Where are we heading next then?"

The sun was almost up by now, but darkness still clung to the edges of the sky like a wet cloth. Countless nights without sleep through the months and years before meant that neither of the spies were particularly tired, but the motivation to search through the endless documents had by far run dry. Apart from dinner the night before, they'd not eaten a decent meal for 2 or 3 days, so it was mostly hunger that distracted them from their work.

"Can't say for certain. Word on the block's that she's on her way up north."

"Head out in a couple of -"

A noise interrupted Natasha as she spoke and the room was brought to near silence. Clint pushed himself off of the bed and locked eyes with her.

"Car." she whispered. The faint rumble of its engine filled the air. "Can you see who it is?"

Suddenly, and just before Clint had the chance to look outside, the window shattered with the force of several bullets. Murmuring, previously disguised by the noises of the vehicle, rose up to a shout, and the shots were accompanied with jeers and threats that were fired in the same direction.

Natasha peeked up from where she'd ducked behind the bed. Clint had followed similar instincts, and was pressed up against the wall adjacent to the window. He carefully tuned his hearing aid while he tried to see the assailants through his peripheral, gun in hand.  
A heavy shot cracked the air and both of them pulled back into their hiding place. Natasha moved her hand to the laptop and unplugged it from its charger and the printer. She shuffled it onto the floor and unplugged the USB stick with her tracking program on it, as well as the SD card that they'd acquired. Fingers locked firmly around the two devices, she slammed shut the laptop and pulled a gun from the strap around her ankle.

"Nat!" called Clint from the window.

She rested back on her hands and motioned to kick out a duffel bag from under the bed. The bag, one of two, was filled with clothes and supplies for the most part, but also carried several weapons. She pushed it out to Clint, who dragged it back to him with the heel of his foot. The other she grabbed herself, taking out a pair of sneakers and another gun, and as she pulled the shoes onto her bare feet, she calculated how many bullets she would have to fire back at the shooters. Slipping the two external storage devices into the back of one shoe, Natasha's thoughts drifted to the print-outs and notes scattered around the room. Quickly, she slid the laptop into the bag and zipped it up.

"Grab the papers, I'll cover you!" she shouted in between shots. Rolling to the underside of the window, she fired a few shots back at the attackers. The window itself would have been splintered and cracked if Clint hadn't broken it thoroughly just before. It meant that he could fire arrows accurately, and hit with more potency in general.

When everything was collected up, Clint darted to the bathroom window for their exit. He pushed the bags through it, having picked them up on his way. Natasha met him in the small room.

"Alright, let's go."

"Hold on -" he said, stepping back into line of fire. Smoke was rising from the car park outside and shadowy figures were converging on the motel room.

Quiver on back, Clint pulled taught the string of his bow. He took a second to aim and then let his fingers slide of out position, thus propelling the arrow in the direction of the attackers. Mid-flight, it split into three, and though their paths were not controllable, each arrowhead hit the centre of three chests with eerie precision. As they fell to the floor, a smile spread across the archer's lips, before fading away as he darted to the exit.

 _ **Plot twist ;)  
**_ ** _I'll get the next chapter out soon as I can_**


	6. Chapter 6

**_Apologies again if I've confused anyone. It'll all get cleared up in the end, I assure you!_**

Clint took fast, long steps about a metre behind Natasha. He braved occasional glances back at the motel, which was slowly getting smaller as the pair of them crossed the field just behind it. Soon, they would be under the cover of trees, and any scouts sent to find the pair would very quickly become confused as to their whereabouts.

"Car's on fire." The statement was made in a matter-of-fact manner, but it was a purposeful veil to try and hide Clint's disappointment.

"Ours or theirs?"

"Ours."

"We should have dumped it days ago anyway." Natasha sighed. "We'll head around to the housing side of town, then latch onto the road."

The motel was one of the first buildings of the town when turning off of the highway. On one side of it, the tarmac led deep into the town itself. On the other, it led down towards the suburbs, starting with the villas that diminished in size as they got further away, and ending with the slum-like housing that seemed to blend into the back alleyways of schools and the dark undersides of bridges. Suburbia, or at least the divided version of it here, eventually became the background to Natasha and Clint. The noises of trucks, police vehicles and whizzing cars flew around them, and it was clear that they were getting close to the busy road.

"Do you take that thing everywhere?"

As well as the duffel bag he was carrying, Clint had a quiver slung over his back. Though he looked comfortable now, running away from the motel like this was not as dignified as he might have hoped.

"I thought you liked the bow." he said defensively, pulling his arm around his body to detach it from its clip.

"I mean the quiver you idiot."

"Where else d'you want me to hold my arrows?"

Natasha flicked her head back to him.

"It just takes up a lot of space." she said.

"Oh yeah? You think it's heavy too?"

"Whatever it weighs, I'm sure you don't notice it for the amount of time it's on your back."

"Well I got one way to make it lighter." Clint smirked, and drew an arrow back playfully to point in her direction. She caught him and hid her smile by turning back around.

"I thought we were meant to be professionals, Hawkeye?"

"I wouldn't waste one of these on you anyway." he said, putting the arrow back.

Natasha glared at him until he looked at the ground sheepishly. She was wearing the shorts and sweater that she found so comfortable, only now her clothing was dotted with thin shards of broken glass that had woven their way into the fabrics.

"I found a building last time." she said after a little while. She did not turn to face Clint again when she spoke, so that he could not read her troubled expression.

"What?"

"It was rubble in the dust - not touched for years - but that was the first time I've seen evidence of life like that."

"Was there anything there? Furniture, tools?"

"Long gone."

Clint sighed. "Every time you go, it's like you die for a little while. What if this thing kills you, Nat?"

The mention of this fired Natasha's defences into action. Her hand automatically tightened the grip on her gun, and her eyes turned snake-like as she spoke.

"If I get trapped there, I don't automatically class as 'dead'. Don't doubt me on my escape routes, Barton." she almost hissed.

"No, that's not what I meant." he grumbled. "Something's going to happen at the climax of all this. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem like it needs you alive by the end."

"What kind of climax are you anticipating?"

"Well, something's coming out, isn't it?"

The horrors of the other world, although sometimes quite dramatic, had never seemed applicable to real life. They were _personal_ evils. A generic phobia of the dark that had evolved into the fear of sudden blindness, anxiety about solitude mutating into the fear of being alone without resources - it were these that haunted Natasha most, and they wouldn't _terrify_ the real world, because they rarely applied to it. They were hers, ones that all the training in the world could do little to suppress further, and they seemed so unreasonable out of context. The idea of these subjective terrors transcending to normal life had simply been discounted. And the figure? Well the figure was _part_ of it all, wasn't it? It didn't exist to escape its prison - it was just a warden, surely. But then there was -

"How do you know?"

"It's all the little things that are coming back out with you all of a sudden."

"That's not -"

"But that's what the dust was, right? Something you picked up there. That and that _voice_ \- it's not that it - whatever 'it' is - wants you to stay in; it's that it wants to come out with you."

Natasha paused for a moment in consideration. Distraction like this had never made itself so evident, and it was beginning to frustrate her that she found herself to be so slow at picking out discrepancies in her plans. Her logic had rarely failed her, but when it did, the mistake was always corrected. Now, it was like she was permanently exhausted - mentally drained from trying to decipher the undecipherable in an encrypted world.

It was endless.

And yet somehow, it was gaining intensity.

Perhaps something _was_ bleeding through.

The chance to understand the 'why' was, after all, always partnered with some kind of end battle. That's just how stories would go. And Clint would of course be right - she was already dancing a dance with death, and if this story reached a conclusion, hers could well be among the blood that would be spilled. Call it being selfish, but she was not prepared to lose her life in a fight she didn't understand.

"The show is reaching its finale, Natasha." Clint said quietly, as if he could read the thoughts tumbling through the tunnels of her mind. She locked eyes with him, her vision clouded over, and spoke quietly, but sincerely.

"I hope you're wrong."

* * *

By the time their diversion had directed them to the roadside, the sun was pulsing in a cloud filled sky. The morning traffic sped past with increasing fury as poorly paid office staff accelerated to try to get to work in time, and frustrated mothers drove on back from the school run. The thumb that Clint was sticking towards the cars shook with the wind, and as another SUV raced by, he laughed at his situation.

"This reminds me of that time in France..."

"That awful moustache." said Natasha, reminiscing. She had tied her hair up and was carrying both the duffel bags. The weapons were hidden deep inside them, and both her and Clint passed quite adequately as conventional hitch-hikers.

"People are getting better at timing their attacks, you've got to hand it to them."

Natasha was referring to the early morning's events.

"D'you think it's some kind of sign from the heavens?" joked Clint. "'Don't meddle with stuff you've not been assigned to'?"

"Fury's found his way up into heaven? Well I never..."

An old convertible pulled up on the side of the road, and a young woman with a high ponytail tipped her sunglasses down to say hello.

"My daddy always told me not to pick up hitch-hikers," she said rather playfully. "But the bastard bit the dust last year, so why don't you two hop in?"

"Nice car you've got here." said Natasha, riding shotgun. Clint shuffled awkwardly into the back seats, pulling the bags in next to him.

"'67 Mustang, ma'am. Had to reupholster and give her a paint job last year, but apart from that, she's just as she was, fresh outta factory."

The woman rejoined the highway and it didn't take long before the small town had melted into the distance. Despite the dreary weather, the old Mustang was alight with smiles and all-round sunshine, a trait that could be sourced back to driver as well as car.

"Where are you guys heading?" asked the woman through the rushing wind. "My final stop's somewhere in Oklahoma, so we're gonna be on the road total about 12 hours. We're only heading North now cos I've got something to drop off in Chicago; I hope that didn't confuse you none."

"Chicago's good for us." called Clint from the back.

"Alrighty." the woman said. Her mouth opened as if she were about to say something, but quickly fell shut again, prompted by the overwhelming noise of the wind. She drove on for a few more minutes until she pulled into a lay-by that housed a small coffee stand.

"Chicago's a lot smaller than I though..." joked Natasha. The woman raised a finger as if to say 'wait', and then jumped out of the car. She returned a few minutes after with 3 steaming paper cups.

"I was gonna introduce myself but then I realised that you folks couldn't hear me." She handed out a cup to both of her passengers. "So I'm gonna get the roof up and then we can do it over coffee."

Once the roof had clicked into position, and a hearty sip had been taken from her coffee, the woman turned to Natasha and Clint to make her introductions.

"I'm Cassie. I'm 25, my daddy was a fat trucker who died of heart disease, and this is the only vehicle I've ever owned. Now you."

"Nice to meet you, Cassie. I'm Joe," said Clint as he reached over the seats to shake Cassie's hand."And that's Liz - although she'll do anything to convince ya to call her Elizabeth at first. Sounds more regal, or something."

"Right, well it's time to get back on the road, Joe and Liz. It's about two hours and a quarter till we get to Chicago, so you guys sit tight."

"Yes ma'am." said Clint, settling down to his coffee.

For a little while, they drove, and Natasha contemplated whether hitch-hiking was a better decision than stealing a car. Less complications, more witnesses, she supposed. It would have to do.

"So are you two a couple or what?"

The question caught the pair off guard. Clint tried to answer.

"Well, it's not really -"

"You're right, sorry. Don't need to go too personal. Uhm..." Cassie pondered over several default questions written into her brain. "What do you guys do for work?"

"I'm a hired assassin and he's a travelling one-man band." Natasha responded in a deadly serious tone.

Cassie braved a laugh and adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. "Trust me to pick the one hitch hiker that'll murder me."

"And the one that'll play background music to that." smiled Natasha.

"It's cool if you don't wanna talk work. It's a rough world out there."

"You can say that again."

Rain started to drum on the roof of the old Mustang.

"So, weird question, but were you around at all a couple of years back, when those... _things_ came into New York?" Natasha asked. "Everyone has a different story." she added after a pause.

"Oh I read about it for a while. I used to live all the way down south, so we didn't get all that much news down there. Our papers didn't have enough funds to print pictures." She pronounced pictures as 'pitchers'. "That thing with the robots though, not too long back? Now that got the conspiracy theorists going. Weird thing that was."

"Pretty strange." admitted Natasha in a 'far-away' voice. She was somewhat glad that Cassie did not recognise them - because, when reminded of these things, most people would. She didn't need the attention.

The car fell silent as the journey continued. Clint, having finished his coffee a good hour ago, snoozed in the back, lying spread out across the seats. Natasha knew that he would wake up immediately if need be, and that he was just resting while he could get the chance. It was her responsibility, she thought, to take watch when he rested.

He'd never hesitated to do the same for her.

Some part of her mind, the part that she allowed to drift and live separate to the usual mission-driven headset, whirred with the fear of going back to the other world. In a way, though the contents of the 'daydreams' haunted her, what worried her most was what would happen to her body while she was away. Whereas Clint knew to be patient with her, another would be less forgiving, and thoughts of waking up in a morgue had seeped into her nightmares more than once.

It was hard to tell what exactly would be more terrifying: opening her eyes to find herself naked and frozen in a frost ridden metal drawer, or screaming herself awake on an autopsy slab as a knife made its way down below her sternum.

The ideas held their potency but grew older in her mind. She'd dreamt up the possibilities of both too many times.

"Your friend a little tired there?" asked Cassie, sneaking a glance back at the sleeping figure.

"He hasn't slept so well recently."

"Yeah... Hey, why don't you get some rest yourself? I promise not to drive into a ditch or anything."

Natasha didn't say anything in response. She'd slept enough these past couple of days, and she felt far more secure when she were awake. Besides, they'd reach Chicago pretty soon - only an hour or so left now - so it wasn't worth trying to settle down for that time.

"Liz? I can call you 'Liz', right, only -"

"Where'd you come from, Cassie?" Natasha enquired. Her tone was friendly but warned the woman of the complexity behind the subject of sleep. "Tell me about your family."

It took Cassie - full name Cassandra Rose Taylor - a full hour to explain her life story. Natasha nodded along, interjecting at points, and generally took the conversation as a bit of a rest. She learned that Cassie was a talented engineer who had graduated MIT, that she had worked for 2 years in Japan, and that she was currently the only financial support for the majority of her family - that is, since their primary bread winner had passed away last fall. Her sister, a college drop-out, had a young disabled son who drained a lot of the funds sent over, and although helping the pair out made Cassie happy, it left her with a lot less than she needed to fund her own living. Chicago was home to the accountant that helped her manage her finances, and so the journey there would allow her to drop off the most recent batch of paperwork and bills.

"Anyway," said Cassie when she finished her latest anecdote. "It's about 10 minutes until I stop off, so you might wanna wake your _friend_ up."

Natasha smiled at her and reached back to tap Clint on the shoulder. He feigned playful grouchiness, shrugging her off and yawning once or twice.

"C'mon, Joe." she grumbled as she returned her line of sight to the road. The car was slowing down and there seemed to be traffic up ahead.

"This place is never usually full..." Cassie said, slight annoyance etching into her voice. Clint was suddenly alert, and surveyed the world through eagle eyes, one hand resting on the top of a duffel bag.

"What's holding us up?" Natasha asked. Calm and collected, her voice betrayed nothing of her anticipation for action.

"Can't really see through the rain." responded Cassie. The wipers cleared the specks of water from the wind shield every few seconds, but visibility was as poor as it would be without them. They had come to a standstill at the base of a bridge, and travel from both directions seemed to have been stopped somehow.

"Looks like we're not going anywhere any time soon," started Clint. "I hope you don't mind if I root through my stuff - I get sort of paranoid about shit going missing when we're moving so much..."

"Yeah, sure." said Cassie dismissively. She turned off the engine and clicked open the driver-side door. "I'll just be a minute."

 ** _More soon!_**


	7. Chapter 7

Natasha threw a look over her shoulder towards Clint. He had already taken his bow from the bag and it didn't take him long to throw a gun over to his companion. Wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, storing it around her ankle would have been a little conspicuous, and so everything except a small knife had been stored in the bags.

"We could have got our own car." said Clint as he quickly ran his fingers over the tips of his arrows to count them.

"They'd have tracked us quicker still." Natasha responded, loading her gun. The two devices were still nestled comfortably in between the gap between her foot and her shoe, and when she was certain that the amount of bullets she had would last her, she bent down and tightened her laces. Looking up again, she saw Clint was waiting for her.

"Did you at least run a check?"

"I wasn't asleep the _whole_ the way here. She's clear."

"She's gonna get in the way, Clint."

"I know." he agreed. "Ready?"

She nodded curtly, and they jumped out of the car simultaneously.

* * *

Natasha stood in front of Clint and untied her hair. Ahead of her, she saw Cassie hovering around a small crowd that had gathered towards the peak of the bridge.

Gun behind her back, the spy progressed. The bridge arched over a gushing river, houses built up around the side-walks that lined the banks, and light rain landed on her skin as tiny, cold pinpricks.

" _Natasha."_

The call did not stop her from moving, but for a moment, Natasha's heart pressed pause.

 _It was there._

 _She could feel it._

"Cassie?" she said strongly, perhaps louder than she'd hoped, because some part of her clung to words for grounding.

Cassie turned to face her and intrinsically smiled.

"I don't know what to say." she started, expression dropping into concern as she tightened her ponytail. "We're gonna be here for a while; there's 3 cars up ahead blocking off both lanes."

"Who's inside?"

"Some idiots tellin' everyone to get back into their cars..." Cassie huffed. She spun around to see the road up ahead, blonde hair flicking from side to side in the drizzly rain. "I'm gonna have to call my accountant, 'cos I doubt I'm a' get there on time."

"Do you wanna go back to the car to do that?"

"I can do it in a minute or so - I just want to see -"

"Can you get back into the car, Cassie?"

"Well I -" She had turned around fully by the time her eyes had settled on the gun. "Oh."

Natasha was not aiming the weapon at her, but at the scene that lay just behind. From two of the cars - considerably more modern than the other - emerged several people wearing all black and holding what appeared to be machine pistols. The crowd surrounding the vehicles scattered.

"Go." warned Natasha. There were about 10 assailants converging on her and Clint, and she tightened her grip on her gun as she chose in her head who she would shoot for first.

" _Natasha."_

 _Not now._

"Are you going to be okay?" asked Cassie, when she had appropriately assessed the situation. "I could -"

A series of shots sounded, immediately followed by the _whoosh_ of an arrow, and Natasha pushed the woman aside to give her protection. When Cassie stumbled back in confusion, Natasha jumped up and fired at two bodies that were coming up to flank her. She dived to cover behind an abandoned car with Cassie in tow, pulling up to shoot at her attackers every so often.

"Go!" commanded Natasha, pushing the woman away when she came back down after unloading a clip.

Cassie skittered away, running in a low slalom between the cars dotting the road. Clint was far behind her, covering the civilians that were panicking in the back seats of their cars. He was slowly making his way up to Natasha, trying to get as many out and away from the fight as possible, and generally providing cover for his partner.

"How many?" he managed to call in between shots.

Before Natasha could answer him, Cassie's head popped up from between the cars.

"Get behind me!" he called to her, frustrated at her lack of speed. Most of the people that had been left behind had run away from the scene by now, and even the bedroom windows that had been opened at the sound of the commotion had been slammed shut again. On this side of the bridge, only 3 of them were out in the open.

"There's someone here," shouted Cassie. She came out between the cars, where the road split in two, and tried to drag the casualty with her.

Before either of the spies could stop her, a bullet clipped her leg. She fell back and screamed, drawing the eyes of all around.

Natasha groaned internally. She focussed on the person converging on her left, firing a shot that knocked him backwards and off of the bridge.

An unexpected blow to the back of her head knocked Natasha to the floor. She squeezed her eyes shut through the dull ache that was forming at the back of her head and made to get up. One of the assailants must have travelled low to the ground and found her way behind the spy, and was fighting now to keep her prisoner down on the street. Natasha pushed back at the weight on her legs, her gun having been ripped from her hands and sent flying across the tarmac, and tried to use her body to fight. The woman holding her down was muscular and strong, and did not have much trouble keeping her pinned down.

"Clint!" Natasha called, a signal for him to help Cassie as well as provide her with cover.

A raspy, quiet utterance came from the woman's ears - something along the lines of _don't kill her yet, find the chip._

The woman made an attempt to search Natasha's pockets, to which Natasha launched her foot into the attacker's face. As the woman recoiled, she released her grip, and Natasha rolled out to reach her gun.

With one clean shot, the body of the woman collapsed on the floor.

Natasha, face determined, stood up to survey her surroundings.

About 5 of the original 10 were still standing. The clothing they were wearing seemed to be armoured, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that this group was more skilled than previously thought. The air was thick with the cacophony of automatic shots and arrows, accompanied, of course, by shouting and screaming.

"There's more coming up from behind." said Clint, who stuck around Cassie protectively. Natasha moved a little closer to them.

"Who _are_ you?" whispered Cassie under the commotion.

"Okay, we're going over the bridge." started Natasha, ignoring her. There was no time for introductions. "It's a little less safe but the only group there is the one we can see."

"Got it." confirmed Clint.

Cassie looked up at them, confused.

Clint let his eyes fall down at her, blood seeping out of her fingers where she clutched her thigh and a worried expression plastered onto her face.

"Stay here and they won't come after -"

A gunshot rang out - singular instead of grouped - and the sentence was cut short. The ponytail, blonde and swinging, hit the road surface first, splaying out into a whirl of hair strands.

Natasha and Clint's reflexes kicked in and they scurried away to a safer hiding place.

It was one shot.

Perhaps the spread wasn't accurate enough.

Perhaps there was no time to reload.

Perhaps it was just more personal.

"Shit." spat Clint, the pooling blood approaching his shoes. He cast a look to Natasha, whose eyes were wide with shock and fury.

Pursing her lips, she reloaded her gun. The shot had come from behind - a direct hit to the head - so if they were to get a good view of the shooter, heading up towards the bridge would be helpful. Of course, it meant that they would be further away from the buildings that they could use for cover.

It didn't matter.

The cars would have to do.

Gun first, Natasha took the left side of the bridge, and (arrow first, as can be supposed) Clint took the right. They mobilised in a crouching position, so as not to be seen, and approached the blockade with caution.

The remaining assailants, alongside any drivers, would be just in front of them. Natasha, plastered against one of the modern cars, took a moment to pause. Her shoelaces had come untied and her shorts were torn - if only she had opted for more practical clothing earlier, then perhaps she would be better protected in a fight like this.

 _'Can't see shooter.'_ signed Clint at her right. He was facing the buildings towards the bottom of the bridge, having been poised and ready to fire but not finding anything of worth. When he had made his sign, he secured his grip on his bow again.

 _'We have to go."_ she signed in response. Clint nodded.

Natasha jumped up and fired a few shots in the direction of her attackers. A flurry of shots hit the windows and the body of the car in return, and thin fragments of glass showered down from above them. For a moment or two, all was quiet. Then, Clint and Natasha bounded into action. Clint firing arrows from just behind her, Natasha flung her legs around the closest of the adversaries, bringing them to the ground. The armoured clothing that many of them appeared to be wearing had a good resistance against bullets, and so shots, even at close range, would be more effective to the head, or, even better, more effective if saved until later. It wasn't too big an ask to work without the bullets for a moment, thought Natasha.  
With two more down, Clint and her moved onto their next targets. By now, the drivers of the cars were participating in the fight for the device, and the workload on the two spies became heavier. Their attackers clawed desperately at their clothing to try and unravel the hiding place of the device, one even coming close to pulling away Natasha's shoe; she kicked him with considerable force before he could remove it. Another pulled at a fold in her sweatshirt, at which she gripped his wrist and pulled her towards him, before hitting him with a high kick to the face.

When the remainder of the original group lay groaning on the floor, Natasha and Clint paused for breath.

"They're getting frustrated." said Clint. "Next wave won't be as nice."

"Then let's get out of here." Natasha responded solemnly.

The advancing attack, now from the base of the bridge, was edging closer.

Clint started to try the doors of the cars blocking the causeway, and Natasha followed, until -

A haze settled over her vision and her senses blurred until they registered nothingness. Her foot went to take a step, unknowing of her mind's predicament, and she became unbalanced. Tripping, Natasha fought for stability, and so she stood there, swaying and bent over slightly. She blinked hard, squeezing her eyes shut until they were nothing but black lines on a pain-stricken face, and tried to pull herself back into reality. Breathing had become unusually difficult, and a dull ache throbbed in her head.

 _"Natasha."_ came the voice. It bit into her mind, a piercing, echoing sound that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was louder than before too - clearer, almost - and, and -

An arm hooked around her waist and pulled her backwards until she was held closely to its body. When she threw her head back and looked up, she found it to be Clint. He had brought her inwards and behind a support column for protection. Her head was tipped back now against his chest, and she took laboured breaths.

"You okay?" he whispered into her ear.

"I don't know." she managed to reply. Forcing her eyes open, she found nothing bar a blurry scene before her and a sharp, screeching noise crackling through her head. Her hand gripped the arm locked around her waist. "Shit, Clint."

He shuffled slightly. The rain was still little more than a drizzle, but it made for an unwelcome discomfort when he needed to be alert.

There was a quick volley of shots and Clint pressed closer to the beam.

It was not long before a shot - singular again - rang out and a projectile spun towards the pair.

Clint spotted the bullet and turned to his side. As he did so, it brushed past his shoulder, putting him slightly off balance. Though the force was not much, the railing seemed to offer little resistance, and both of them were sent toppling over the edge. Releasing his grip in shock, Clint fell backwards clumsily. Natasha pushed her hand out to reach the railing, fingers almost touching it - but almost was not enough, and she too tumbled down into the river below.

* * *

The water of the river was murky but translucent enough to allow some light to penetrate its surface. From below, bubbles of silvery blue rose up to meet the jagged light-lines that branched out across the liquid, and, with the suddenly warped sounds, it was almost picturesque, the pellucid layer of the river melting into the darkness below it. Ripples made by the rain were forming on the surface, though the point at which Natasha and Clint had fallen into was still crowded with contortions and streams of bubbles. The pair of them were suspended there, under the water, for several seconds, until the current swept them further down and their limbs broke into action.

Natasha tore through the water first.

Spluttering turned into gasps as she savoured the taste of the air, the cold of the river having shocked her into a wakeful enough state to allow her functionality. She could only stay there for a few seconds before bullets pounded the water beside her, and she dropped under for protection. Immediately, the sounds and feeling of the wind were replaced by dulled vibrations in the water. Her eyes searched, best as they could, for her partner.  
Clint was struggling under the current, having sunk deep before he could begin to swim upwards, and so Natasha glided down to help his escape. She wrestled the bow and quiver free and broke away for a moment, so that she could hook the bow under her arm and sling the quiver over her hip. Her fingers locked now around Clint's arm and she pulled upwards, until her head bobbed up for air and was joined by his soon after. They swam until they could pull themselves onto the bank, and pull themselves into a hiding place.

Clint lay on his back, sucking the air into his lungs, and Natasha was lying stomach side down, propped up by her elbows.

"That's colder than it looks." said Clint after he'd allowed himself time to recover. His right shoulder hosted a growing, crimson patch that ate at his waterlogged clothing, but the wound that lay beyond the small tear was only superficial, and so he did not seem to concern himself with it.

"Well," Natasha said, hair dripping. "I think it's safe to say we've pissed them off."

Clint laughed at her, and then coughed when his laughter had run out. Natasha scrambled to her feet, making lines in the sediment and silt where her feet pushed upwards, and helped her companion come to a standing position.

"Still got those chips?" he asked her. Water coursed down both of their faces and necks, falling in drips until it reached the cracks in their feet.

"You'll wish I didn't."

"Guns?"

"Nope."

"No." Clint said. "No, not my bow. I love that bow. I love it more than coffee."

"Relax, Hawkguy." said Natasha, retrieving the weapon and its ammunition from a nearby bush. He caught them as she threw it, and closely inspected it for damage.

"We can't go back for her." he said sadly when he had done so.

Natasha didn't respond, just looked down at her hands.

"They're leaving, you know?" observed Clint after a little while.

"Which direction?"

"What are you going to suggest, Romanoff?"

"No guns, waterlogged pants and a USB stick that's digging into my heel? We're gonna follow them."

She locked eyes with him and lifted her mouth into a smile. It was fake, but a good forgery, and, upon a glance, completely hid her fear and remorse. Clint returned it, with the same subtext.

 _ **These seem to be getting longer...  
Hopefully that's not a bad thing!**_


	8. Chapter 8

**_So... whoops. I'm writing the next few chapters while I can, so that I can post a couple while I'm settling back at school. Sorry for such a delay!_**

Sticking out like worn-down teeth in grey-scale, the buildings on the streets rose up from the edges of the pavements. The rooftops of this part of town were littered with deck chairs and old newspapers; they were the not-so-secret hideouts for college drop-outs, and the quiet places to watch the New Year's display reflect off of the river.

Clint ran at the same speed as Natasha below him, leaping over the gaps between buildings and following the cars as they drove away. Puddles had formed on the surface of the roads and roofs, and ripples were sent rushing across them as feet pushed up from the ground. Though they wouldn't be able to outrun the vehicles, they had a good chance of seeing where they would end up. From a high perspective, as that from the roofs, Clint could judge turns and other manoeuvres, which he could then follow by taking short-cuts that he had a good view of. Natasha weaved her way through the town herself, though occasionally she looked up to see if Clint had found a better route. The cold water had boosted her adrenaline enough to mask the event on the bridge, and the emerging police sirens all but spurred her on as she bounded across the streets.

Following the river, the cars moved east. It seemed that they had left a scout behind, searching to see if Clint and Natasha were still in the vicinity, but apart from that, they had all mobilised to reach their next destination. After a few minutes, the road ran out of apartment buildings and offices, and Clint made his way down to meet Natasha on the side walk.

"They're going south again." she said, using something small to unlock the door of a car parked at the roadside. "C'mon."

* * *

Natasha had tried to get into the driver's seat but was instead herded into the passenger side by Clint. The vehicles they were following were shrinking as they sped off into the distance, and so there was little time to argue, but she thought it rather inappropriate seeing that, physically, he was in worse shape than her here. Water still ran down her neck, the rain preventing her hair and skin from drying up, and the cold of the river still drifted through the air like an unwelcome ghost.

She reached over to flick the air-con on.

"What did we lose?" asked Clint, once the clunky whirring had subsided to a quiet, consistent drone.

"Another life." Natasha mumbled, and let the silence after it stick in the car for a few seconds. Then she sighed. "Laptop, printer, suit, guns -"

Pausing, she reached down to pull off her shoe, letting the two devices tumble out onto the square of carpet.

"Did your phone survive?"

Natasha dug into one of the pockets of her shorts. It was sealed with a zip, so that its contents wouldn't be lost, and was roomier than the standard pockets for women's wear. Her phone itself was a model of Tony Stark's, and so she wasn't all too concerned about the level of water damage it had sustained.

"Can you hook the card up to your it? Maybe we can get the jump on the bastards."

"If we do that, we'll fry it. I doubt we've lost any info, if this thing is as important as we think it is then it'll be protected, but trying to use it now will short it."

"So it's a good old fashioned car chase then?"

"Looks like it."

Clint sighed heavily and rubbed his cheek with one hand. The car was warmer now, but it was taking time for the two of them to dry off.

"How far south d'ya reckon they're going? This woman can't have made it all the way north and back quicker than us."

"I don't know if she ever left the south." Natasha responded.

"I don't want this to have been a trap all along. It's too much."

"If Cassie drove us to the bridge on purpose..."

"Cassie was shot."

"Cassie was a decoy."

"Was she, though?"

"It would be better if she was." For a moment, the drone of the air conditioning and the noise of the sweeping wipers was all that filled the space. Natasha took a breath. "I don't know. I don't _know;_ I can't focus as much as I used to."

Clint tuned his gaze so that it fell on her eyes. They were heavy and saddened, with glints of anger crossing their surface, and they looked _tired_ , more tired than he'd ever seen those eyes before. Her voice had dipped again, he noticed - had fallen to a drained whisper. She stared out at the rain, distracted, and though Clint was certain she knew he was watching her, she did not show it.

"You scare me, Natasha," he said quietly. "How close was it this time?"

"I'm still awake." she responded, her speech perkier again. She must have noticed herself stumble. "I _am_ still awake and I think I stopped it."

Clint bit his tongue to prevent him from saying what he was about to say next. He knew he wouldn't be able to stop her from finishing the mission, knew that she would not listen to him if he tried to persuade her, and yet the words still leapt to his lips, because he would always make to try. But he swallowed them. The only way he could protect her, this woman who did not need protecting, was by keeping her at his side. He'd catch her if she'd fall. She was stronger than any one he knew.

Natasha rummaged through the stolen car's storage units. From the back of the one closest to her, she pulled out a boxed sandwich, and promptly tore it open. She took one, then threw the other to Clint. As his fingers were wrapped around the wheel, the sandwich fell apart and a slice of ham dropped onto the floor.

Clint made a surprised sound, just lower than a squeak, and Natasha tutted at him. She pushed the sandwich that was in her hand into his mouth, and then picked up the components of the other from the floor.

"You're gonna eat that?" said Clint through a mouthful.

"I'm starving." she replied, taking a bite. While one hand fed the bread into her mouth, the other tapped at her phone. "I know a girl who can send down replacements for some of the stuff that we lost."

"Won't do much, considering they'll have got into the laptop by now. All the files are on there."

"Not now they aren't - I deleted the memory remotely." Natasha said, holding up her phone. "Why would they want that info so badly anyway? I'd have thought they could source it themselves..."

"It could be a third - or maybe fourth, I've lost count on this - party." suggested Clint. "Ones who don't have anything yet."

"It's far too organised to be something so separate. I guess they really don't want anyone touching their stuff. Or maybe it's just vengeance they're after."

"What, like us at this point?"

"That printer was real expensive."

"You're damn right. This girl of yours. Where would she replacements to?"

"I don't know, Hawkeye." Natasha said, like a frustrated teacher to an inquisitive child. "We'll have to find out, won't we?" she added smugly.

"All right." Clint smiled back at her.

She turned to face the window and locked eyes with the rain outside. Small droplets stuck to the window, little globules that captured the fields of dirty grey and zigzags of colour where the road met some grass. She could hear the pellets of it bouncing off the roof, and for a second, she let her self be enveloped in the childlike amazement of rain and how it worked.

* * *

Clint yawned.

The rain had worsened and the visibility was poor, which was slightly annoying, seeing that the car chase had all but dissipated and all that was left was a slow cruise a mile or so behind the other vehicles. When the thing you were chasing was relatively far away, it was convenient if it could actually be seen.

Natasha had fallen asleep.

Her head rested against the window, her hair, still slightly damp, falling in curls over her chin. The road was smooth enough not to interrupt her, but Clint drove carefully nonetheless. With this job, you slept when and where you could - and you didn't wake anyone up unless you wanted to be punched in the face. Or maybe the latter just applied to Natasha. The journey so far had run up to almost 5 hours, and Clint knew he would have to have a break sometime. With 3 cars to follow, he was guaranteed a chance to change over soon, as the driver of each one would too be facing his predicament. Besides, the night was fast approaching, and the dimness of the roads where the afternoon had faded out was gaining persuasiveness in its attempt to lure him to sleep.

Clint slipped his hand down to the CD player and hit the power button. When Green Day filled the car, a smile spread across his lips and he quietly joined in with the lyrics.

"Want me to drive?"

Natasha's eyes were still closed but her voice made it clear that she was awake.

"And have you falling asleep at the wheel?"

"Oh come on - if anyone's dropping off at this time of night it's you."

"They're pulling up ahead; I'll hit the side in a minute."

Her eyes flicked open and her face scrunched into a comical expression.

"Is this Green Day?" she asked. "This is Green Day. Been a while."

"Can you see if 'American Idiot' is in that compartment?" said Clint, pointing.

"Album?"

"Yeah, the album."

"Got it."

They swapped seats at a roadside stand that sold burgers, and ate silently for a little while before driving off again. The devices were dry enough to use without accidentally destroying them now, so Clint made an attempt to read through the data. He fumbled with the SD card and his phone, which had also survived the torment of the river, and eventually got the cell to scan what it needed to. He sorted through the information it was constantly picking up - a large amount of it detailed their own recent escapade, everything more heavily veiled with encoding to try and prevent access. Very little of it revealed their latest lead, but there were enough clues for Clint to make some assumptions.

"I think they're heading to straight to Mississipi." he said. "Looks like the idiots in front of us _do_ have access to the network we're on..."

"D'you know where exactly? Only we can try and beat them to it."

"I have an idea -"

"So where?"

"But I don't think they're right. They're following a sighting that's a day or so old, and pretty vague at that. No, I think she's found a better hiding place, somewhere more personal, like -"

"The desert." Natasha suggested immediately.

"What?"

Realising she had spoken, she felt her head rush with blood.

" _The desert."_ Natasha said now, under her breath. "The files mentioned Arizona."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Book a room."

"Nat, that's another day and half's drive."

"It'll be fun."

"We're not spending another 20 hours in a stolen car for a hunch."

"Shut up and go to sleep then. I'll wake you in the morning."

Clint grumbled. "We have to finish this, Tasha."

She pursed her lips. For a second she froze.

"Can you still hear it?"

"What?"

"It's getting louder." she frowned.

Clint reached over and turned the music up.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. really doesn't have a clue where this woman is, do they?" Natasha said.

"They've got to have gotten somewhere with all this, or they wouldn't have ordered us to kill the only ones who do."

"Then where is our great and powerful organisation?"

"I could always -"

"Don't even think about calling them. Wait until we find her."

"Be careful, Natasha."

* * *

When morning finally poked its head above the horizon line, the birds had grown tired of singing. Their song, once again, had been scattered and unsure, and now it had washed away with the rest of the rain that had fallen the night before.

The 3 cars speeding to the south couldn't be seen now, and all that was left was a long stretch of open road. The journey would take them a while longer, but it was helpful that both of them could take turns to drive - they were not, it would seem, losing speed, and in many ways they were beating their opponents, even if the destinations of each party were different. A room had been booked, and a message had been sent to the woman who would provide the spies with resources.

Somewhere, in a desert, a burst of wind swept away a top layer of sand.

Underneath it, if the scene were put under very careful observation, there could be seen a few of the grains appeared to be black.

 ** _I am sorry that it's taken so long to get this out  
_** _ **Next week should be same time as usual**_


	9. Chapter 9

The car had reached its destination at around 2 in the morning. Natasha parked it - well, as much the word 'parked' could be applied here - at the edge of a scrapyard, and searched as best as she could for anything they could had left behind before she left. Clint was still snoring, and though he mumbled a little, he stayed sleeping as Natasha carried him over her shoulders to the room they had rented.

They let themselves rest until 5am.

* * *

"Does it hurt?"

"Not too bad."

"Good."

Natasha wrapped some bandage over the gauze on Clint's arm to keep it in place. The wound itself had closed on its own accord, but it had to be cleaned to clear out any dirt that could lead to infection. With little time to be lost, the minutes to clean and dress the mark had to be taken away from their sleep.

Clint watched Natasha's hand intently as she worked.

"You sure you can do this?"

She didn't look at him. Her face was resigned, her eyes hollowed by the seriousness of his voice. It was incredibly stupid to risk going on any more missions. And yet -

There was something that drew her closer to her work.

 _It was calling her name._

"Can you move your arm alright?" she asked Clint somewhat absent-mindedly.

He grumbled in response, but moved around a little to show that he wasn't too injured. She patted him on the shoulder and got up to get changed.

There was a disused bunker, close to a road that ran alongside one of the large deserts in Arizona, and it was the best bet on the location of Sophia Melanthios. It was mentioned in the documents about her - skimmed over in a few footnotes and 7 word sentences - and, looking back it it, it seemed rather fitting. A childhood playground (as mentioned in a found diary), several of the state's dunes and deserts had been transformed into a game-space for Sophia and her siblings, a sort of 'back-yard' for the caravans their family took on their many holidays. The bunker especially had been a notable find, and, indeed, a worthy arena for the children to play in. Now, it seemed it could be useful to serve another purpose.  
The complex, as detailed in the building plans, was largely underground, and consisted of several rooms - a few of which were linked up to electricity and water lines. If the billionaire was indeed here, then the bunker could easily have been the last intended place for her to stay at. She could not have been there for more than a few days, but the space would last her much longer than any squatter's flat hidden in the city - it was secluded, fortified, and, ultimately, quite comfortable.  
Indeed, it would be in her interest to protect herself from any intruders to this sacred place. Whilst the so called 'third-party' were some way away in the South, trouble could still come from protection around the woman herself. In a way, Clint and Natasha hoped that the reception they would be greeted with was a one-woman party. But, in truth, there was too much mystery around how she worked. It came back to the question - was she running to S.H.I.E.L.D. or to it? She could well have invested in protection for herself, but then again, she could be trying to find help on her own. And so, when it came to what could be expected, it was difficult to guess.

"Would help if S.H.I.E.L.D. had actually latched onto this..." Clint mumbled as Natasha ambled back over.

"Checked the old files, then?" she asked, sitting down next to him on the bed. The room they were staying in - and it was just that, a room - was basic and undecorated, hosting only a double bed, a desk and a small fridge. There was a toilet behind a screen in the furthest corner of the room.

Natasha was almost fully suited up, as was Clint, and only really went to sit down to put on her footwear. Scratches were scattered over her hands and she noticed them, small lines up against her palms and knuckles, as she pulled on her boots. Through time, she had learnt not to concern herself with things like that. A package had been delivered about an hour earlier, and it contained suits, arms and ammunition for them to use during the raid. The actual concept of the mission was, in essence, very childish; really, what they were hoping to do was confirm the position of the woman they were sure was missing, and then boast their findings to their superiors.

Natasha paused while her left boot was halfway onto her foot.

Clint looked at her, a classic puppy-eyed pout slapped onto his expression. She sighed, forced her foot into the shoe (letting it slam down onto the floor abruptly) and laid her head onto his shoulder. The curls, caught in the early shoots of sunlight, settled into the grooves of Clint's neck. He shuffled ever so slightly, then tipped his head to kiss her forehead. She remained unmoving, and so he wrapped his arm around her waist.

For a moment, everything was... comfortable.

Then, hooking her arms around his neck, she turned to kiss him. He met her lips as she moved to do so, and though it was short, for a few sweet seconds, everything became a little _more_ comfortable. When she drew back again, he did not look angered or shocked, and so she found it safe to move a little closer, this time to just hug him. He embraced her and pulled her closer still, for he felt part of her fear, and it pained him, because he had felt it before, both in himself and in her.

 _'It's okay.'_ he thought to himself, as her hands gripped him tighter. ' _We can face this together.'_

When the pair pulled apart, the warmth from each other radiating in strands like the threads of fraying cloth, they sat on the side of the bed quietly.

* * *

Swiftly taking out the guard at the entrance to the bunker, Natasha and Clint were making their way into the complex. Both were covered in various bruises and scratches, most of which had come into being by the force of the river, and it was clear that Clint's injury caused him some discomfort despite it not being too serious.

 _"Natasha."_

By now, the calling was little more than background noise. Clint glanced occasionally at his companion, to see if she had reacted when the voice hit both of them, but she gave nothing away, and held his sixth without hesitation. It was becoming louder, but, and more importantly so, it suddenly seemed a lot more _real_. It was almost as if he could hear it echo off of the concrete walls, as if it had switched from planar to immensely more directional.

And then, all at once, in the middle of a word, it stopped.

Natasha and Clint looked around tentatively. The entrance to the compound had been fairly well lit, but after navigating a few stairwells and reaching the body of the bunker, it was clear that the lights deep inside had all been turned off. Above Natasha's head, the final cage lamp swung ever so slightly, casting grid-like shadows in a 3m radius. But beyond that, _darkness_ seeped out of the corridors. Each doorway and each turn was characterised only by its faint outline, and, at the end of the hall that stretched most furthest, everything seemed to just fade into black. Through open eyes, the silence could weave creeping demons that existed only in the imagination, could conjure rushing figures in the dark that were little more than falling eyelashes. A coldness emanated from beyond the barrier that separated the see-able and the unknown, and it crawled over the concrete and up into the skin of the two spies, forcing shivers to shoot up to their brains.

The sound of breathing atop the quiet withered until it ceased.

And then the silence, and the darkness, was just that. Silence. Darkness.

The cracking walls, where mould threatened to grow underneath the railings of pipes, seemed to shiver at the thought of disruption. Anticipation pressed down on any reflex that might threaten the absence of life. And -

 _Bang._

 _Bang._

Two knocks against the pipework rung in the air, the sound of clanging metal unmistakable above the emptiness of the space. Simultaneously, Natasha and Clint pulled up their guns and headed towards the noise. Clint flicked on a small torch that had come in the package that was sent for them and, carefully, they advanced towards the heart of the complex, trailing soft footsteps that lingered on the worn flooring.

There was a second that hung in the doorway of supposedly secure corridor, a second between Clint's tentative touch on the metal handle of the door and the scurry of the heavy boots of the people behind.

Natasha swung around and fired shots into the poorly lit crowd, the bullets speeding past Clint who was fighting lower to the floor. The guards - and it was assumed that they were guards - fought to push the two of them back, but fared poorly against the skill of the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives. The were arguably the same level as the goons on the bridge - cleverer than most, but not enough to get back out of the situation they'd thrown themselves into - and constantly found themselves blocking one shot only to be brought down by another. Very quickly, the majority of the defence line had retreated back into the shadows, and the characters which remained squirmed on the floor.

"How many was that - a dozen?" said Natasha. "There can't be that many more in there."

Through the iron door, there followed a hallway that led down to a T-junction, and the smallest evidence of life slipped around one of the corners. The Light was quickly turned off when it was realised that the front line had been broken, and Natasha and Clint progressed slowly, so as not to disturb whatever lay beyond. Very little noise remained now; only the distant memory of the call and the sound of breathing now lingered in the air. Approaching the junction, the darkness was leaking into Natasha and Clint's bones, and they were very almost persuaded to turn back, when someone jumped out from a side door, lunging towards Clint.

"Okay buddy," said Clint, intercepting him and holding a small knife at his throat. It would usually be custom for him to use his bow, but the compact nature of the bunker, alongside the lack of high ground made a pistol seem like a better option. The knife had come as a handy extra, tucked within his sleeve. "Stop right there."

Natasha scanned the hallway and tried to make out what she could. They had left the door at the entrance to the corridor ajar, as means of escape if needed, but the amount of openings around them was unsettling. Their prisoner squirmed, and Clint retracted the knife positioned at his neck. Swiftly, he drove the man into the wall, and so he lay now at their feet, incapacitated. Natasha kept her eyes trained on the junction and the doorways that lined the walls leading up to it. Quickly, as if by accident, the Light flicked on and off, and brought with it a silhouette of a woman. She poked her head around the corner and immediately drew back, scuttling footsteps sounding from her direction.

"That's her."

"Let's go." Clint responded without hesitation.

"As soon as we go through there, they're gonna try and flank us." Natasha warned.

"Second thoughts, Agent Romanoff?"

"Not at all, Agent Barton." she replied. "I was just thinking about your arm."

Launching into the space between the 3 hallways, torch illuminating the way forward in a conical manner, the spies were met with the scene they had expected. Only, it seemed on a much larger scale, as the remainder of the dozen assailants before had now multiplied into about 30 agents which were all armed and posed, ready to attack. Ceiling lights, long and rectangular (much unlike the cage lamp closer to the entrance) flickered on across the bunker.

"This is big." said Clint casually, loud enough for Natasha to hear, but also just loud enough to raise their attackers' suspicion. She nodded with a less than serious expression, knowing that the crowd would pose little problem for the both of them, and almost delighting herself in the opportunity for a fight like this. She allowed herself to play a little smile, and watched the person in front of her shiver at the sight of it, fuelling its intensity. Her gun was raised at the centre of the wall of people in front of her, and she was stood back to back with her companion, who covered the other route. The sound of running trickled through the network of concrete and it was clear that more troops were arriving - now, it seemed, was time to make a move.

Natasha aimed to start taking shots, but she stopped.

In fact, she _more_ than stopped, she _froze_ , as if something had gripped her very suddenly. And as she realised what was going wrong, panic began to grow inside her brain like a tumour, and all the processes that were going on in her mind ground to a halt, as if something had been wedged into the wheel of her consciousness to stop it from working.

"Want me to go?" Clint asked her under his breath. He found his mind struck with concern, as if he could sense her disposition, and he listened intently for a response to justify her decision. Natasha's smile had faded and her eyes had lost their mischief. She shuffled uncomfortably for a second, and Clint could hear her take a shaky breath. He held his position, holding onto the fear that prevented his enemy from seeing their blatant advantage over the situation.

"Clint." Natasha whispered, shoulder brushing against his as the muscles in her arms tensed up. A small tapping noise came from her fingers as they lifted up and settled back down on her gun, and it became clear that she was checking her own responsiveness. She turned her head ever so slightly to the side, her chin pointed down to her right, and she let herself breathe out before she spoke.

"Clint? I," She cleared her throat then tried again. With the layers of her voice stripped away, there was genuine fear in what she was saying. There was little point in hiding it now. "I think I'm gonna fall."

* * *

When her movement came, it did so suddenly, as if a switch was abruptly flicked off - and the gun clattered on the floor as her arms dropped out of position.

"No no no no no!" said Clint, a little louder than he had hoped. He caught her at her waist with one of his arms, and swung his weapon defensively with his free hand. "Don't shoot!" he barked at the row of barrels facing him. Natasha, waist height to him now, hung over the length of his forearm. "We'll do what you want - just don't shoot!"

Clint threw the gun on the floor and let himself sink down gently, so she wouldn't hit her head on the ground. She looked as if she were kneeling, but her body was limp and her hair covered her face.

"What's wrong with her?" asked one of the faces behind the collection of guns.

Clint ignored him. "Don't do this, Romanoff." he whispered under his breath. "Don't do this now, come on."

The barrel of a gun dug into his back.

"Hey!" the voice behind it commanded. "The man asked you a question."

Still, Clint dared no response. He whispered under his breath, searching for some way to bring his companion back.

"Come on Natasha." he spoke desperately into her ears. "Come on, come on."

 ** _If they weren't so already, things are about to get weird...  
More next week!_**


	10. Chapter 10

For a moment, all the world was just darkness, and the only sensation to be felt was falling.

Natasha forced her eyes open and found herself plummeting into a deep pit. It became apparent that she had blacked out closer to the top, and her vision was still clouded slightly, in the form of a blackened, grid like mesh. She could make out a pattern on the wall - stone, perhaps, built up like bricks - and it occurred to her that perhaps this was a well of sorts.

She had stepped into the other world.

And then she was falling.

And now she landed.

Her body hit the bottom of the pit and bounced off the floor slightly. Sand flew up in a cloud around her legs and torso, accompanied with the sound of groaning as the shock had chance to course fully her veins. The grains of sand at the very base of the structure were midnight black.

* * *

"Don't touch her!" Clint snarled at the man who had strode into the centre of the circle that had formed. Slowly, watched intently by Clint, he retracted the hand that was making its way towards the spy, who lay curled up on the floor.

"Tell me what's wrong with her." the man demanded, adding another gun to the many that were trained on him.

"It's not that easy to explain, sweetheart." grumbled Clint. "We can be useful to you, okay? I'll come with you, just let me take her."

Muttering started at the back of the troops, but the man shushed them. "You've stormed in here and shot half of my men. Why the hell would you be useful to us?"

"Well you might not be aware that S.H.I.E.L.D. is tracking Sophia Melanthios' ass, but _she_ probably is. I'm an agent of theirs. Either detain me, or let me go."

The man cocked his gun and pushed the gun closer to Clint, who raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. means jack shit to me. I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but my payroll is plenty high enough to cover collateral damage."

"So what are you going to do - shoot me?" asked Clint. His voice was angry now, defensive; he was secure in the knowledge that Natasha would not wake for several hours, and that if he left her here, she wouldn't be able to wrestle her way out of it for some time. His hand slipped down to her wrist and felt for a pulse. There was nothing. "Just get us a room or something. Quickly! And tell your god-damn billionaire her guests have arrived."

Reluctantly, the man signalled with his gun for the people behind him to move. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents or not, the sudden demise of the woman would be of interest to his boss.

"Get up."

Clint got to his feet.

A woman stepped from the crowd, holstered her gun and reached out to pick up Natasha. Her ponytail swung behind her as she slowly squatted down. Clint pushed the woman back to the floor and locked eye contact with her.

"I said I'd take her." he warned, to the sound of a few dozen clicking guns.

The woman raised her eyebrows, returned to her feet and tried again, to which Clint threw a punch that landed on her nose. She did not spend long down, and pounded up to hit him in return. The woman, though fairly small in stature, had plenty skill in fighting, and Clint reeled backwards with pain shooting outwards from his blackening eye. Not willing to risk being shot as punishment for his actions, he kept his fists by his side and did his fighting via a cold stare. Then, scowling, he dropped down and slipped his hands under Natasha's motionless figure. The woman looked to her colleague, rolled her eyes and muttered something as she fell back into line.

The pain around Clint's eye was not an unknown one, although the frustration of not being able to fight back was a relatively recent thing. Well, perhaps excluding New York. As he was pushed towards down a corridor, his friend heavy in his arms, he could hear the lights around the bunkers spark to life. He could fight those around him relatively easily, he thought, but it was safer to wait until Natasha was awake, so that they could move out together. Besides, while they were down, they would be secure enough to be protected from the others that were searching for Melanthios.

It was far from ideal. But there was not much he could do.

The party came to a small room and stopped. There was no sign of their hidden billionaire, but the guards seemed confident enough in their instructions as they ushered Clint inside, paying little attention to the woman who lay, virtually dead, in his hands. A metal grate that served as a door was slammed shut and padlocked, and eventually, the two of them were left on their own.

Clint held Natasha for a moment or two longer, listening to the footsteps disappear into the hallway, then carefully settled her on the floor. She could have likely passed for sleeping, had her chest been rising and falling.

"Wake up soon, Nat." he said. "Okay?"

* * *

 _"THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING AT THE BOTTOM OF A WELL."_

When Natasha's eyes opened, they were met with the sharp outlines of sand. It was odd to see the grains in the foreground be so well rendered, so bright and clear, and then regard the background not even seconds after to find it blurred and unfocussed. In time, as her eyes trained to see the brick a little better, the resolution got higher - indeed, so was the nature of the eye in focussing - but there was something about it, the entire process, that made it seem superficial, _unnatural_ so to speak.

Pushing herself up from the ground, Natasha felt an odd texture warp around her fingers. There was no water, she recalled. What had been left behind was a series of ghosts; memories and ideas had woven together to form a fabric, one that lingered where the life giver had given up, and one that remained now, at the bottom of the well, where even the last _slosh_ of water had dissipated. It felt like cotton wool but was heavy like lead, and it flowed too, the feeling of the stream running through her bruised fingers. Of course, she'd seen it before: at the foot of the beach, where the waves pushed it along the shoreline and onto her toes.

And now, as she fought the pain to come to a standing position, Natasha remembered all the times before where she had slipped into this reality. The wave of memories was strong enough to shock her into freezing where she was.

She did not want to explore this wasteland now.

She just wanted to leave.

The rising panic that would have sent her home before was quickly extinguished by Natasha's practical mind, which refused her access to her fears and focussed on getting out of the well. Daylight filtered in through the disc that marked the top of the structure, bounding off the stones that surrounded her for a good couple of metres from her head height.

She swallowed, knowing it would be difficult to try and clamber up the wide diameter of the container she found herself in. The light in the chamber was slowly fading, or so it seemed, and thus it was better to start moving as soon as possible. Her hand reached out to touch the stone walling, the coolness of it bleeding into her fingertips. It had an odd calming effect, as if the cold was relatable somehow.

And then, the texture and the temperature fizzled out of existence, and was replaced with a plain that consisted of the sand that had lain at her feet. In front of her stretched a vast horizon, no landmarks, no edge, _no well_ ; her confusion caused her to stumble around for a few moments, to survey what she could while she could do so. A sudden flash of black now, and the plainness was quickly replaced by a dance hall.

Natasha knew exactly what it was, and she felt angry at what she stared into. The floor was as cold as the stone before, the tiles cracked and the coolness again familiar.

"Stop it." she spoke to the dancers in front of her. They looked at her expectantly as her eyes scanned the room for a familiar face.

"Stop it!"

It was happening again. When the weeks had past and the team had recovered, she thought she had buried the memories deep enough to keep them hidden. But perhaps it was never enough. She had spent _so much time_ whittling away the thoughts, until they did not dare to resurface, had spent _so much time_ learning to free herself from their control, until reality's grip was finally tighter - it seemed ridiculous for the Red Room to return. When Ultron was gone and she and Wanda had made amends, she thought that she would be safe from the memories.

Perhaps not.

 _It was happening again._

The dancers spun around to answer their tutor's call and began again at the start of the music. Blood stained the hands of the ones who could not scrub the marks on their skin hard enough, and scuff marks that could not be hidden under the wax lined the floor on which they danced. As they gracefully raised their arms, some of the hands fell into position of holding a gun instead of a pose. They were scolded once, clearly, and then left to move on.

"Stop it." Natasha said under her breath. She knew that, within a week, the number of dancers here would be reduced. Tints of nervousness ate away at the corners of some of the girls' faked smiles; they would fail first. In a way, upon looking closely, it was clear that they knew.

 _"MARBLE."_

Surprised to hear the Question, Natasha jolted. The scene blipped out of existence, and upon turning, she found herself in the plains again, the sand embedding into her feet.

Her eyebrows curled in frustrated confusion.

The dance hall, in all its bitter glory, had gone.

* * *

A slight wind swept the grains up from the surface, brushing against Natasha's legs. Her mouth was slightly open as her hair curled around the gentle fingers of the breeze, and she very almost dismissed the episode as a daydream. A flicker of darkness persuaded her otherwise, and she was quickly launched again into a scene of her past.

Darting across her vision, S.H.I.E.L.D. insurgents rushed to take their positions. They were holding a perimeter, it was clear - though the details of the scenery did not quite make themselves evident.

Clint, _agent Barton,_ nocked an arrow, and stomped with heavy boots on a darkened floor.

For a brief second, Natasha registered it as the events on the Helicarrier, where Loki's grip had still extended unto Clint. And then she could see the youth that was plastered onto his face, and the determination there, that very much belonged to him, not a power-hungry Asgardian god - no, she assured herself, this wasn't the lead up to New York at all. It was the failed assassination - she could see it now - that led to her recruitment to S.H.I.E.L.D.

A rather different setting to a Hellicarier, it took place at a KGB safe-house - a snow crusted apartment block that had been bought out by a Russian agent in the 1960's. The younger Black Widow inside, realising the oncoming storm, would be hidden at one of the windows. She was wounded, Natasha remembered - a fight the day before had resulted in 3 deep cuts in her leg - but her adrenaline was still running at the kill she had made. The S.H.I.E.L.D. presence was there in revenge for the death of one of their own - many in fact, yesterday's being the most recent.

Clint was sent to kill her.

Natasha stood and watched, helplessly, as the events started replay according to her memory. The battle would see many of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on the perimeter fall prey to the Black Widow, until eventually Hawkeye would catch up to her, fight her and hold an arrow to her eye... and then, after some consideration, lower it.

But, very soon, the timeline seemed to change. Natasha realised that her past self had moved to another position, where she could scope the archer out.

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

The agent poked her head above the window of a much higher floor. The room was in a corner of the block, hidden just well enough from a ground-floor perspective.

"Please don't." Natasha warned, head shaking very slightly.

A sniper rifle settled on the window and the younger Natasha lined up a shot on Clint, who searched for her face in every window. The first shot called on Hawkeye's instincts and he quickly ducked away, Natasha following his movements around with her scope. Another shot now, and she cursed in Russian as she missed again. Below her, the supporting S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were closing in.

"Stop it!" Natasha tried to shout, totally captivated by the scene before her. In her own eyes, she saw a predatory glaze settle, and she knew what was coming next. "Stop!" she cried, and fought her disgust at the weakness in her voice. "They'll make you better!"

The rifle propelled a bullet through the air and directly into Clint's head.

"He'll make you better."

It seemed odd that Clint did nothing to fight against the bullet, as if the very notion of him was untouchable, and an unspoken barrier had been breached. But it did touch him, and the blood oozed from the hole in his forehead as his body sank, lifeless, into the floor.

And that was that. Clint was dead.

The memory - or what had started out as one - faded away. Natasha glared at the empty space ahead of her, her body unmoving, her mind numbed.

 _What was this place? What was it for?_

"Why?" she asked the wind and the sand, finally feeling justified in asking the question. Her voice was timid, made almost silent by the shock.

When the air around her had lingered for a sufficient amount of time, the sandy plain melted away into the dinginess of the well. Natasha felt fatigue creep into her veins, the scenery changes leaving residual marks in her head, like jetlag after travel.

"I remembered." she said out loud again, her audience this time just the cold stone. "Is that it? I remembered, and I wasn't supposed to?"

 _"THE BLACK WIDOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL IS LEFT TO DROWN."_

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, frustrated.

 _"THE FEELING OF ENTRAPMENT CAN BE SYMBOLISED WITH THE INSIDE OF A WATER WELL, WHERE THE WATER INSIDE NO LONGER REPRESENTS LIFE, BUT INSTEAD, A SLOW DEATH. THE WELL CAN REPRESENT ISOLATION, STRUGGLE, AND, MORE LIBERALLY, ACCESS TO THE INNER CONSCIOUS."_

Rage started to climb inside Natasha, though the exact premise of the feeling was unknown.

 _"THE SPIDER WITHIN THE WELL IS UNLIKELY TO ACCEPT ITS FATE, BUT WILL INEVITABLY DIE. DESPITE ITS ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE ITS PRISON,_ _THE STUPIDITY OF THE SPIDER IN ITS LONGING TO EXPLORE WILL RESULT IN THE ARACHNID BECOMING DISORIENTED. THE ONLY WAY OUT WOULD BE TO USE ITS IMAGINATION, A MATTER WHICH-"_

"I get it!" she shouted to the voice, angered. "It's me at the bottom of the well. It's me, it's me who fell, it's me who failed, it's me who killed him, _it's me_! Now _why? What_ do you want?"

 _"TO BE A REMINDER, TO-"_

 _"What did you do?"_

The anger that had swollen up inside of Natasha quickly dissipated and gave way to sudden alertness. The voice was not that of the Question, or even that of her own, but instead of a serpent, and it slithered into her ears with sinister purpose. The feeling made her shudder, though she suppressed the urge to gasp.

 _"Oh,"_ it continued, letting the knowledge of itself seep into Natasha's brain. _"I see."_

As the scene changed once again, the level of tiredness rushing along the course of the spy's body was again raised. She stumbled but caught herself, and stood to attention.

 _"Aren't you clever? You escaped me there, for a moment."_

A figure appeared, radiating darkness from its centre. It was hooded - dressed a little, Natasha supposed, like death - and from within the hood gleamed a Cheshire-cat style grin. The lips surrounding the shining teeth were painted red, and seemed somewhat familiar.

 _"It's such a shame I have to take control."_


	11. Chapter 11

**Okay, just to clarify:** **the events of Age of Ultron _did_ happen - this story is set after it. I won't, however be writing much of the new avengers team (as mentioned before), so any characters that might crop up will probably be more oriented around the original team. Sorry for the confusion!  
**

Natasha's eyes scrunched up in pain as her lungs contracted. As she tried to draw air in through her windpipe, she found that it too was constricted.

The figure reached out with long fingers, skin cracked but human, and wrapped them around her throat. At her touch, breathing seemed to become slightly easier, though it was still strenuous. Eyes from inside the hood drilled a familiar stare into Natasha's mind, and when she pried her eyelids open, she felt a pang of recognition.

 _"You've managed the longest so far."_ Sophia Melanthios hissed.

Curls of orange hair fell over the fingers around Natasha's neck as the spy tried to reassert a rhythm to her breathing. Her knees had grown weak and she was struggling to stand - her face was flushed, concentration leaking out of her reddened cheeks.

 _"You've certainly been... fun. That was a nice trick back there."_

"I don't understand."

 _"You don't have to, little S.H.I.E.L.D. puppet."_

Natasha glared but pulled away her gaze when breath did not come so easily any more.

"What do you mean?"

The figure sighed and pulled down the hood of her cloak. _"And there was I thinking you'd caught on... I'm using you, Romanoff. All those little lakkeys in the lab didn't last a day. But you, well you just keep on fighting. I even lost you for a moment back there."_

"I've got to be honest with you," Natasha said through strained breaths. "That raises more questions than it answers."

The woman, _Sophia_ , released her grip and let the spy regain her balance. There was no sound of relief from her, as breathing was still as difficult as before. It seemed that the control of Melanthios extended beyond the physical figure here.

 _"Have you found it yet?"_ she asked. Her voice was still sharp and unpleasant, but the face that produced the sounds seemed sweet.

"What?"

 _"Oh I do wish you'd catch on. There's always been two parts to me, Widow, and at the moment they're separated. I only joined S.H.I.E.L.D to try and unlock the second one. That's me here, by the way."_ The woman forged a smile and waved. She paced around Natasha as her brain tried to calculate a way to compensate for the lack of oxygen. _"Things get awfully lonely around these parts. I need a stone, you see. That little AI-gemstone cross back at the facility gave me some pointers - I thought it was the thing in his head, at first - but it turns out it's something a little more complicated."_

Sophia let a slightly larger volume of oxygen trickle into Natasha's lungs when she received no response.

 _"Come on, spy - fulfil your reputation. Ask me a question."_ she spat the word 'spy' when she said it.

"Where do I fit into this?"

Disappointment spread across Sophia's face.

 _"Ever so self-concerned, aren't you? I told you - you're hardly the first. It's very difficult to find something you can't touch - so I employ some... helpers."_

"So what is _this?_ A world just for you?"

 _"Oh no. This? This is yours. I just hitch-hike a little."_ The woman smirked and tipped her head. Brown curls that crawled over her back swung ever so slightly.

"If it's mine, why can't I breathe?"

 _"You are breathing."_ Sophia scowled.

"I've done better." Natasha responded. Her chest rose and fell heavily now, her muscles working hard to bring as much through as they could.

 _"You know the human brain can't go much more than 3 minutes without oxygen? A dead body can't open a door. To keep you alive, I've had to keep siphoning oxygen through the dimensions. It's really quite difficult."_ The voice, seeming to separate from its body again, was getting frustrated. _"You are breathing. I am letting you."_

"It's still not mine. This place," Natasha said, sensing the frustration. "It's not mine." The memories that had rushed to greet her earlier made her uncertain of this, but for the most part, she was sure that whatever she had been exploring, she did not own it. It was a planet - it was alien to her. It was not hers.

 _"I assure you, more of it belongs to you than you think. I'm in your mind, Natasha. I have been for a while."_ Sophia closed in on Natasha and came eye to eye with her. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was shorter than her but held her authority despite her disadvantages. " _Doesn't it hurt, for me to control you here? Where you are all alone?"_

Natasha shook her head slightly. "I'm not the only one here." she said, face angled upwards, as if that would help her breathing.

 _"You're a fool if you think that I am your companion."_

"I meant the other one."

 _"What other one?"_

"The other voice."

The air from Natasha's lungs was cruelly ripped out and she stumbled, the muscles in her legs failing her. She let herself drop to the ground and turned over to rest her weight on her elbows, her back facing the sand.

 _"You know, I thought the resistance you showed me the first few times I brought you here was admirable. These mind games? Not a fan."_

"Why is S.H.I.E.L.D. chasing you?" The words were barely audible, but they were formed well enough for Sophia to hear.

 _"S.H.I.E.L.D. want to know where I am. Your organisation is a dumb 'intelligence' agency with some freaks in it - they haven't got a clue what's going on."_

"And the others?"

 _"Friends turned enemies. Don't concern yourself with them."_

Natasha tried to summon strength enough to play the billionaire and get more information out of her. But her wits had abandoned her, evicted to make room for trying to stay alive, and now she was left with petty questions to play for time.

"Why now?"

Sophia crouched down, letting her robes spill out in a wide circle around her, and gently pushed Natasha's shoulders down until they dug into the sand. Exhausted, the spy complied. Very little oxygen was reaching her brain now, and it was becoming clear that she would soon pass out.

 _"Because we are close."_ Sophia whispered into her ear. Purple streaks followed the vibrations along the nerves, and Natasha's eyes softly fell shut.

"What happened to the others?" she managed.

 _"I got bored of them."_ The billionaire paused to allow a response, but was met with nothing. _"Natasha?"_ she asked in the tone of a teacher warning a child. She then flooded Natasha with air, watched her squirm with the realisation, and then took _everything_ , so that she was left choking on the floor, heels digging into the sand.

 _"You disappoint me, you know that?"_

Sophia grabbed the wrist of the hand that was making its way to Natasha's throat, and forced it to the floor. She was leaning over her, hair blending into the orange curls on the ground. Her aggression was sudden, and left marks on Natasha's skin.

 _"I've been kind to you - I took the time to stabilise you myself."_

She pressed her knee onto Natasha's thigh to stop it from moving. The spy's gasps were soundless now, as even noise abandoned her.

 _"Next time is soon, Natasha, and you know what? I'm not going to help you any more. You better hope that that archer of yours can keep you alive - I'd hate for us to have gotten this far only to fail."_

 _"Oh,"_ she added as Natasha stopped struggling. _"And tell him he might need some extra beds for your friends."_

* * *

Clint worked at the lock of the cell, irritated at his slowness in opening it. The padlock was really rather simplistic, and the only reason it hadn't been opened yet was because Clint had been contacting the Avengers from Natasha's phone. Though they searched and removed contraband off of himself, they did not touch Natasha, out of superstition most likely. Clint had done them a favour by handing over her gun, but that was it. Indeed, he found himself somewhat reassured in his intimidation skills.

The message itself hadn't been complicated - 'found billionaire' with the co-ordinates seemed appropriate enough - but encoding it and getting a damn signal in the bunker had taken a fair amount of time. He cast a look to the figure at his far left, who lay in the recovery position on the concrete floor. Natasha had been there, motionless, for the best part of 3 hours.

Now, suddenly, she sparked to life.

Choked gasps gave way to panicked breathing as Natasha found herself back in the underground compound. The sound hit Clint like a rock and he scuttled over quickly to hold her, so that she could grab out in search for reality, and find something when she did.

"Okay, okay." he said, her hands digging into his back. His head was rested against the wall, his own fatigue settling in, as the realisation of the intensity of this episode dawned on him fully. Natasha nestled her face into his shoulder and groaned loudly into the thickness of his jacket. Then she pushed off of Clint and fell back against the concrete bricks of her enclosure.

"Tasha?" asked Clint, squatting in front of her. "You all-right?"

"Yeah."

* * *

Clint worked at the lock again, braving occasional glances at Natasha.

She neither spoke nor slept, just sat there, slouched against the wall. Exhaustion had rendered her muscles useless, and her expression had fallen into a mix of drowsiness and lassitude.

Inside her head, a fight was going on to make sense of the situation.

First of all, if Sophia hadn't known who the other voice was, then _who_ was it? And why had she been so hostile when it was mentioned? The Question spoke in a far dissimilar fashion to both Sophia and herself; it was something different, separate seemingly. Its origin remained hidden, but its importance was oddly clear. Perhaps it was guidance of some sort - but the voice had a tendency not to make all too much sense, and its reminders were often unhelpful. So what _was_ it? And where did it come from?

Secondly, the nature of the billionaire herself was deeply confusing. There was no way, it would seem, that she was human. So what then? An experiment? A mutant? _An alien?_ Why had the other part of her been cordoned off? Moreover, why had S.H.I.E.L.D. not noticed?

And why the whole chase in the first place? The SD card, the sub-groups, the build up - if Natasha were really that important, then why didn't Sophia just protect her?

Natasha's shoes felt like they were clogged with something. She let her hands slip slowly to one of her boots, and unclipped several of the buckles that locked the straps in place.

"What's wrong? You got sand in your shoe?" Clint asked as she wrestled the boot off her foot.

Tumbling out of the ring that marked the opening, black sand made its way onto the concrete. It built up until it formed a pyramid-like pile on the ground, anomalous grains skittering across the floor. Clint watched on in amazement.

Natasha dropped the boot as her thoughts drifted to what happened in the other world.

She turned over her hand and examined the bruising along her wrist. Her muscles were still sore from the fall, but the evidence of that wasn't quite as physical as the red palm print against her skin. And the sand that had piled up on the floor.

"What the hell?" said Clint under his breath.

Natasha said nothing.

After a while, the two had returned to the unbroken silence that had lain between them. Hanging open for a relatively long time now, the lock was, by all counts, neglected, and Clint instead tapped busily at the phone. It seemed that the guards of the bunker had forgotten about their prisoners for the night, and were focussed on more pressing demands. It wasn't clear what those demands would have been - the invasion of their safe ground by a couple of spies should maybe have been prioritised - but evidently, it desired a fair amount of attention.

Perhaps they were all on a long coffee break, Clint thought.

S.H.I.E.L.D. were sending over an extraction team to break through the protective barrier that encircled the missing billionaire. Technically, they'd been sent in as a rescue for the two agents, but there was no intention (and, really, very little expectation) of Clint and Natasha to stay put. Indeed, there would be little attention on the pair whatsoever - it was really Sophia they would be 'extracting'.

Now Natasha was awake, she and Clint could mobilise at any moment. But the premise of fading daylight was a daunting one, and with Natasha refusing to sleep, the pair would need certainty on their side before they tried to escape. And so they sat there for a long while, waiting for the incentive to move.

Eventually, when the waiting got tiresome, Clint removed the padlock and checked the corridor. He ambled over to Natasha, who didn't seemed to acknowledge his presence, and hooked his arm under her armpit. She groaned when he lifted her but didn't struggle, fatigue blurring her processes as well as her vision.

When the pair had passed through the main corridor, a gun from a passing guard held loosely by Natasha, they were met with the fury of the Stragetic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. And, funnily enough, with the fury of Director Fury too.

 ** _So this is the last of the stuff that I pretty much wrote in one in one go -_**  
 ** _I'll try and get another out next week!_**


	12. Chapter 12

_**Ahh so I've had a hectic week, apologies for not uploading before now! I also wanted to get this chapter right, so while I can't guarantee it's perfect, it's a bit better for having spent a bit more time on it:**_

Sensing her hunters, Sophia had vanished. But instead of running for the road, she, alone, had rushed further into the desert. Some S.H.I.E.L.D agents had followed her but the vast expanse offered few clues to her new place of hiding. The guards from inside the bunker hadn't been very helpful, despite their surrender, and so S.H.I.E.L.D. had ushered whoever seemed important enough into a little cabin that sat further along the road, for _further investigations_. Now, as night was dragging on a little, the organisation was devising a search party for the morning.

And so Director Nick Fury updated his agents.

Natasha and Clint stared at him with uninterested expressions. They slouched in their chairs, covered with cuts and bruises, the frayed blue material of the cushions clawing at their legs.

"So are you gonna say thanks?" asked Natasha. Tiredness meant that her voice was almost a slur, but the tone of it was sarcastic enough to provoke Fury.

"This wasn't your mission, Agent." he said in return, with deep seriousness. He was frustrated enough with the pair, already having delivered a lecture to them.

"Look, Nick, we found your missing billionaire for you." Clint said more civilly. "You lied to us in the first place. The least you could do is apologise."

"I wouldn't care if you found the lost treasure of Tutankhamen, Agent Barton. I'm telling you to stay in line."

Natasha turned her head, distracted, and then readjusted her gaze to fall on Fury.

"How long had she been missing for?" she said, popping her cheeks. It was clear that she wasn't interested in formalities.

"Sophia Melanthios left S.H.I.E.L.D. 4 months ago."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

Natasha drummed her fingers on the table.

"It's not like you to lie to me Nick."

"It's not like you to question my decisions so much, Agent Romanoff."

She raised her eyebrows accusingly.

In her mind, different processes whirred to find a correct approach to the situation. She and Clint had been lied to about what had happened between Melanthios and S.H.I.E.L.D. - that much was clear - but the organisation tended to have a reason for their shenanigans. Fury was a proud man, but it wasn't out of spite that he gave the wrong information.

It occurred to her that she may have underestimated the intelligence of S.H.I.E.L.D.

'And forgot the way it hid things.' she reminded herself.

"You've known all along?" Natasha said, less like a question and more like a slightly surprise-ridden allegation. Was S.H.I.E.L.D. aware of what Melanthios was doing? It would make sense, she supposed. It didn't excuse the oddness of the mission she were sent on, but it would warrant the secrecy and cover ups around Sophia herself. And as long as the woman had not caught on - which she didn't seem to have done - there was little reason for Natasha to suspect anything either.

S.H.I.E.L.D. knew, she decided. It had been watching her.

"Known what?" Maria Hill swung the door shut behind her and let it hit the edges of the frame with a _bang_.

She had spent the last hour or so getting talked at by Captain America; despite the vagueness of Clint's message, S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to recognise its urgency, and so had sent whichever avengers they could get their hands on to the bunker. As most of the team was chasing down an Asgardian rogue in Japan, only Captain America was available. Now, due to his relation to the case, Iron Man had also made an appearance, and had spent the majority of the hour bickering with Rogers. The captain himself was particularly eager to get started on the manhunt - much to the distaste of a very tired Agent Hill, and, indeed to Tony Stark. Hill, then, was feeling understandably annoyed.

"What is she then, Director? What did she do to the others?" asked Natasha, curious now and ignoring the woman who had just entered the room.

Maria sat down besides Fury, unfazed by the lack of attention on her. She had been waiting for the spies to realise that Natasha's episodes were neither unique nor secret, and, anyway, she had been through worse than a little lack of recognition.

"Melanthios is a parasite." Maria said. "Like a virus, but not quite. She tunnels into your head unknown, and then filters through your mind until she finds a piece that she can use.

"She can't so much control you and your thoughts so much as mess around with some of your systems. You said 'the others' - you know you're not the first. We ran a few tests on the guy before you. When he would go into an episode, his body would almost shut down. To us, it looked like he just died, right on the spot - but somehow he came back. That was only because he wasn't doing any of the work for himself. Melanthios was the one keeping him alive."

"How does she do that?" asked Clint.

"From what we've gathered, through statements and questioning of the others, we know she exists in 2 parts. She seems to do what she does using the connection between the different elements of herself. Exactly how she does it, we don't know."

"Well, why?"

"We don't know."

"Well shouldn't someone be working on finding out?"

"We _have_ been working on it - for the last 6 months." said Maria, somewhat exasperated. Usually, she and the people around her would get on well, but the fatigue and frustration of the others was proving contagious.

"So you've not found a way of stopping her yet?" Natasha interrupted, sensing the tension. With the nature of this reveal, she had no problem with stirring things up herself, but that was mainly because she could be excused for her actions. At that moment, were hell to break loose on anything _but_ her own accord, she would find herself with a considerably larger amount of problems.

"You have to understand that Melanthios isn't human." responded Maria. "Partially, maybe, but as a whole she's something completely different to us. We haven't had access to her for months; it's just impossible for us to understand what's going on."

"She said she was siphoning air across the dimensions."

Maria jotted something down on a notepad she had brought out. There were other scribbles on the page - bits and pieces that Clint had said about the other world, and little snippets of what had been spotted. Very little of it recorded Natasha's own words. She _had_ seemed too tired to talk, only now taking the time to immerse herself in conversation.

"Well, I hate to be pedantic," said Natasha strongly. It was difficult for her to maintain a constant state, it seemed - she was flicking between wounded and angered constantly now, one moment tired and weak and the next strong and alert. "But surely, if you were so interested in this _parasite_ , you'd be utilising all your force to find this woman?"

"I assume you're referring to your mission, Agent Romanoff." Fury said.

"We shouldn't have been deployed in the first place."

"It is not up to you to question my authority."

"You sent us on the wrong mission, Director." scoffed Clint.

"I sent you on the mission you needed to be sent on."

"People are dead!"

"You're assassins! Collateral damage happens!"

"It usually happens for a cause."

"Natasha," Fury began, but he was quickly interrupted.

"The business with the SD card? That entire chase? Did you plan that?" Natasha asked. "It's not quite in your job description to be plotting your own agents' demises."

"Look," said Maria loudly, but somehow still solemnly. "You weren't meant to be searching for this woman. S.H.I.E.L.D. has had no part in setting up whatever clues you were following."

"Why get us to eliminate the opposition? Get us involved at all?" This was Clint speaking.

"Sophia Melanthios is dangerous, Clint. Plenty of people would be happy to have her on their side and that can't always be allowed to happen."

"So you'd have just let us chase this until we killed the entire search party? Without any mention of what was going on? Whatsoever?"

"There was a reason we didn't tell you what was happening," started Fury angrily. "If she'd have figured out that Natasha was onto her, she'd have killed her. I have 7 dead personnel back at my facility, 4 of which would prove my point exactly. "

Tension called for retaliation, but the response came more disappointed than angry.

"Well how long have you known, exactly?"

Fury sighed.

"How long?" Clint reiterated.

"6 months."

"So before you lost track of her?"

The room, a square box with painted black walls, oozed with the whispers of approaching dawn. It hushed its inhabitants into silence.

Natasha's head was tipped back and her voice was stored in the bottom of the basin like water in a sink. Exhaustion was a funny thing, she decided - it was ever so surreal, even more so when considering its usual infrequency, and it was awash with a series of contradicting emotions. Guilt that rolled over to an odd form of glee, anger that quickly fell away to carelessness. It was all very complicated. Too complicated to keep composed under.

"Can we take her to a room or something?" asked Maria, indicating Natasha, whose head lolled a little.

"I'm still here, by the way." the spy grumbled. "Can't get rid of me that easily."

The others stared at her with mild concern. She had indubitably deteriorated over the last hour, but it was hard to tell by how much. Her defence system was almost like a chimp's; when she was hurt, she would hide it as best she could, to protect herself. It was handy enough during missions, and it was almost beneficial in itself - it was like a placebo affect took over her, and made whatever injury there was heal faster. Back when she was alone with Clint, she had little choice but to give into showing symptoms. But now, in amidst a crowd, she had to raise her shields.

"Nat, you can go if you need to." said Clint softly.

Natasha's eyes fell down onto his, then drifted over to Fury.

"The episodes themselves. What are they for?" she asked, sounding as if she weren't fighting inside.

"A way of keeping the connection open." Fury responded.

"We think." Maria added.

With a swish of orange curls, Natasha tipped her head further down and rubbed her temples. She shrugged, and after a little while said:

"How much medical equipment have you got with you?"

* * *

Voices threatened to penetrate the shell Natasha had cast around herself. It had been a little while since she had fully understood the topic of the conversation, and a good hour or so since she had last spoken. She didn't say much about why the oxygen tanks were necessary, just that they should be on hand, in case of emergency. Now, she mentally recorded what was happening to her.

Natasha released a heavy breath and felt the odd emotions settle down a little, leaving her with the final stage of exhaustion.

Her eyes were glazed over and her head drooped sleepily; the luxury of being awake was too good to let go of, but the effects of not resting were taking their toll. Alongside the fatigue, angered shouts throbbed bluntly in her mind. It was her name again, she knew, but however much white noise she could supply, it could not be drowned out.

The connection was being forcibly held open, clawed fingers taut with the stress of pulling back the walls of the channel.

"Natasha, you need to sleep."

It was Fury talking to her, she could see, but his voice seemed buried, quiet and with consonants dulled.

"With all due respect, Director, I have other priorities at this moment in time."

"This is not a request, Agent Romanoff, this is an order." Fury threatened.

He pushed up from the desk using his palms and leaned the table until he cast a shadow over Natasha. Too tired to return his glare, she dipped her head sheepishly.

"Natasha." he said strongly. "You have to let yourself rest."

The voice inside her head, belonging, so it seemed, to Sophia Melanthios, swirled with increasing velocity. It was difficult to discern Fury's voice from the building cacophony, and the last few syllables of what he said quickly dissolved into nothingness against the storming sounds. She guessed the ending to the sentence, enjoyed a sharp intake of cold air and then gently shook her head.

* * *

"Is she just refusing?"

Clint sipped at his coffee and watched as the sun clambered out from the horizon. There was no birdsong to fill the silence.

"I can arrange for her to be sedated." suggested Fury. The two of them were stood outside of the bunker, the crisp light bouncing off the 4 black SUV's that were parked in front of them. The frustration between them had fallen away, engulfed by the rising sun, and now they were left talking as they would have before - as colleagues, as employee to employer, and, secretly, as friends.

"That's not fair on her, Nick." Clint said after he took a sizeable gulp. His breath puffed with water vapour; it seemed the cold attitude of the desert at night, combined with his hot coffee, made for an almost wintery atmosphere.

"I don't know how much you've gathered on all this," said Fury. "But the way Sophia works is not through kindness. It's not good to see Natasha like this, Clint, and she won't take it easy, but some sleep might do her good in the long run."

A moment of quiet, still and undisturbed, hung alongside Clint's breath.

"She's more than just a parasite, Barton." Fury sighed, changing to another topic. "She doesn't do this just to survive, she does this because she wants to escape. She's a prisoner whose cell bars line up perfectly with the street - she will toy with you and punish you until you break her out yourself. She won't kill Natasha - not when she's this close to getting what she needs - but she sure as hell will make her suffer."

Clint downed the rest of his coffee and scrunched up the plastic cup.

"Yeah well, it's not just Melanthios in this thing. Nat'll sort it. You know what she's capable of."

He turned to walk but the Director's voice cut him off.

"Search party goes out in an hour. Rogers is taking the east, you're taking west. Stark will stay with me. I've seen what happens when Sophia gets pissed off, and it's not always pretty - a first aid post might come in useful."

There was a pause before Fury added: "Agent Barton, when we find this woman, we shoot her dead between the eyes."

"I don't know if that'll work, Director. There's two parts to her, right? What if killing only one of them doesn't work?"

"Then we'll hunt down the other and kill that one too."

Clint sighed and immediately regretted drinking the rest of his coffee so quickly. It would have been useful to have something to fill the gap now.

"She'll want in on this." he said after a little while.

Fury looked at him, the light shaping his face into a half-state of worry.

"Under no circumstances should you let that happen."


	13. Chapter 13

A dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. agents scouring the sands before them, the team stood and contemplated the task ahead. Fury surveyed his people from his hiding place in the shadows, watching as Steve Rogers scoped out the east side with Clint searching the west next to him.

And there was Natasha, stood just behind Clint, boots digging into the sand.

Tony strode out of the bunker and came up beside her.

"You look awful." he said nonchalantly. Though exhaustion still hung around her like a bad smell, the fear still remained in Tony's mind that Natasha would answer him with a rapid boot or fist; he scuttled away quickly now to Steve's side.

"Morning Capsicle." he said, smirking. "Ready to get to work?" His t-shirt bore a crudely drawn chest-piece - having the real thing removed not too long ago was understandably difficult to get to grips with, and so he had scribbled a depiction of it on most of his shirts - in fluorescent yellow permanent marker, of course. Pepper had managed to save a few designer pieces from his wrath...

Steve ignored Tony, rolling back his shoulders and pointing towards the distance.

"We've deployed road blocks on the other side of the desert. It's a large area to cover, but should she get anywhere close to the roads there by nightfall, one of our guys should spot her."

"What happens when you find her?" Tony asked. "If things actually go to plan for a change, that is."

"The idea is to apprehend the subject." said Steve. He scanned the faces that had turned to observe him. "No-one get trigger happy."

Clint threw a look to Director Fury, who dismissed it with a patient hand. He shuffled, folding his arms and widening his stance.

"Everyone got enough water?"

There was a collective mutter of agreement from the crowd.

As they followed the party outwards, Natasha and Clint each kept one hand on their weapons. Both knew that they couldn't leave Melanthios alive by the end of this. They walked along with sunglasses shading their eyes and scarves shielding their mouths, a canteen of water swinging at their hips.

"Do you think Fury's told them?" Natasha asked, indicating Steve and Tony with a nod as they separated.

"I don't know." said Clint. "Stark's worked closely with her and Rogers isn't stupid; Fury might have kept quiet, but they'll know something's up. I don't think they'd have come if they were completely clueless."

"I was worried you'd say that."

"What are you afraid of, Nat?"

"Don't ask me that."

"You don't need to look strong. You don't need to, you should know that by now." Clint said, a hand on one of her shoulders.

"Don't be so naive." she said harshly, but she had already moved close enough for Clint to kiss her on the forehead. From an outside perspective, she decided, it would appear submissive, dependent. But she needed it, a moment where she could free herself from the guilt. She could be childlike. Pretend that there was no responsibility, no war she had to fight in.

"I'm so tired." she whispered.

"It'll be over soon." said Clint, but his voice lacked greatly in conviction.

* * *

From the sand ahead rose two wavering lines of heat that distorted the world in the distance. Reflections and swirling currents danced within it, lapping at the bodies of the agents searching the rocks on the horizon.

Natasha sipped at her canteen and regretted not informing the group of what was about to happen. Though she wasn't sure on the details herself, she knew that she and at least one of her 'friends' were about to fall victim to the other world. This time, neither of them would be safe when the episode struck. Melanthios was determined to toy with her, even going so far as to use a threat to someone else as her advantage. The idea was, Natasha supposed, to flaunt the control she had over the situation. But she couldn't help thinking that there was something intentionally disturbing about her behaviour.

Natasha had no idea what would happen if Sophia were to be allowed to connect with her other part.

By any means, it wouldn't be pleasant.

S.H.I.E.L.D. and its associates were not stupid, but they were quick to jump to conclusions. And yet maybe she _should_ have told them what was going to happen. Granted, she had made sure the team had enough medical equipment to keep an entire squadron on life support, but she'd missed out the fact that it was herself and ones, perhaps a few of the group that would be needing the assistance.

I really should have told them, Natasha thought.

There wasn't really any reason why she didn't. It was just - Fury would overreact. And she wanted to confront her - the woman, that is - wanted to _find_ her, more than anything. Her curiosity was somehow stronger than her survival instinct - she had to know; _what_ was she? Where was she from? It was, after all, only a countdown until they'd meet again anyway.

"I see her!"

Natasha's eyes went first to Clint, and then to the figure he was indicating. She was crouched among the sand, wary, the heat sifting into her brain.

Clint felt his fingers drift down towards his gun. His eyes met hers, and in them, he saw fear. Purple flecks frolicked in their centres. A more detailed observation briefly paused his movement.

He pitied her.

Still, the gun was drawn from its holster. Clint lined up the target, balancing his finger on the trigger, and -

 _'Barton we have a problem.'_

Clint had forgotten the existence of the comms system. He kept his sights on the figure but returned his gun to his side.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

 _'Rogers is down and he's not breathing.'_

"What? The man's built like a 6ft wrestler - how did _that_ happen?"

 _'Stark's bringing him in to us now. Have you still got eyes on the target?"_

Clint noticed that his gaze had drifted downwards and so quickly flicked upwards to resume his view from before. Ahead of him, the figure had brought herself to her feet, but had otherwise not moved from her position.

"Confirmed."

 _'We need you to bring in the subject ASAP.'_ chattered the voice on the other end of the line.

But Clint was distracted. He watched the woman in front of him, watched her sway in slight confidence, and then watched as a smile crawled across her lips. And yet she was not watching him back.

Open-eyed, Natasha was staring into the violent, _violet_ fire that burned as an aura around Melanthios.

Clint tried to decipher what was being unsaid, what hung in the space between them but formed no words to their lips.

Suddenly there was a razor sharp, drawn out screeching noise, and from the distance large amounts of sand began to build up into the sky. They twisted around with the authority of an ice-cold storm, but were lost to the sheen of the heat in the background.

Natasha crouched and covered her head with both hands, letting out a scream of her own in one singular burst.

The figure in front of Clint had vanished, the building storm in the distance amplified by the vastness of the desert that formed the horizon.

"Nat?" he said without moving, the sound still ringing in his ears.

When no reply came, he pulled his eyes away from the spectacle before him and turned his attention to his friend. She sat motionless on the sand, hands sinking slowly back down to her sides.

"Nat?" Clint crouched beside her and gingerly touched her cheek.

"Just Steve?" she muttered, eyes unmoving.

"What? Don't worry about him. Tell me what's happening."

Natasha's attention slipped and she reached out in fear, her fingers finding and clamping around Clint's arm. An involuntary tear coursed over the outlines of her cheek. Clint couldn't settle on a way to react, and so he remained quietly hunched over, paralysed.

"I can trust you, right?" Natasha whispered.

Clint was taken aback by how preposterous this sounded. The eyes he stared into now suddenly turned alien - all the memories they had cemented, all the moments they had shared - it all fell away into nothingness, and the specimen in front of him was contorted into a stranger.

He wanted to shout at her: are you kidding me? How dare you use those eyes, so serious, and ask me if you can trust me? How dare you sit there, the centre of this world and yet all strength gone - how dare you ask me this now, after all this, after all that had been before?

Surely. thought Clint. Surely she knew?

His response to her question came out as a soundless nod.

Natasha tried to focus on him but struggled. A moment of doubt crossed her mind. How dangerous was this thing she was fighting? Was it worth trying to save Steve and herself? Maybe putting the responsibility of their lives on someone else was better if avoided. She could stave off Clint's help now and let Sophia decide whether to save her or not. No dependence needed - just a gamble at the start.

Of course, if it were lost...

"Just keep us alive?" she said meekly, consciousness slipping. "Okay?"

Before Clint could respond, she passed out, releasing the grip on his arm and falling forward slightly. He caught her but he didn't hold her close to him, the strangeness of her at that moment providing a slight barrier between the two.

"Okay," he said, noticing the quiet of the desert for the first time. "Okay okay."

The sand storm building in the background had lost its ferocity and was instead opting for stealth in its play. It curled swirling loops around a distant figure as Clint slid his arms under the limp body in front of him.

 _"Hawkeye come in."_

Clint sighed and composed himself.

"I've lost visual on Melanthios." he said. After a second or so, he added: "Tasha's gone, same as Steve I'm guessing - I can't get any vitals on her."

 _"Is it the same thing happening to Rogers?"_

"I don't know for certain. Look, we've got to get them in. I -"

 _"How long did it take her to wake up last time?"_ interrupted the voice from the communication system.

"It's not the same as before." said Clint desperately, watching sand fall to the ground as he lifted Natasha up. "I don't think we can just leave her this time. Something's not right."

 _"Stark's suited up and has just brought Steve in. Get to as high ground as you can and I'll send him out to you."_

There was a pause.

 _"_ _Is there anything indicating where the target's heading off to?"_ the voice added uncertainly.

"It doesn't matter now."

* * *

For lack of available space, the makeshift medical bay had been constructed in one of the larger rooms of the bunker. Machines and tubing sent regular beeping and the deflating sounds of pumps echoing across the concrete corridors.

"You should get your watch fixed, Barton."

Clint looked down at the tiny clock face on his wrist and frowned. The hands there remained motionless, stuck at a fraction of a minute before 7 o'clock. He looked up again and found himself looking into the face of Tony Stark.

"You should start making ones that don't break."

Tony scoffed. "My speciality is suits, not timepieces, Clint. I don't even think that's one of mine. In fact, I seem to recall you actually openly refused to wear one of m-"

"How close are you guys to figuring this stuff out?" asked Clint, interrupting him. He stood between the beds in the small room, a hand resting on the headboard of Natasha's.

"Look Tweety-Bird, you can't go pointing fingers at this. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't done with the research yet, but that doesn't make them responsible for what's happening."

"It's been hours, Stark. Everything's failing. In Steve too - the lungs don't work, the heart doesn't pump. Kidneys as well - it's all stopped, and for so long now."

The chirping from the machines filled the space again.

"You should have told us, you know." said Tony.

"It's not like you didn't know what was going on anyway."

"The point still stands, -"

"There wasn't any reason to tell you!"

"Well I'm sorry, Agent Barton, but it's part of the job description to work with your team on these things. Look, I want Romanoff to come out of this as much as you do. Rogers is better off alive than dead too. But I really think you're overestimating your role in this."

"What do you mean?"

"Just think about Melanthios for a second. I've worked with the crazy bitch for months. It's never been about you, it's never been about S.H.I.E.L.D. It's not even really about Natasha - this is _her_ , just her, and she wants to get her self strong and geared up in the easiest way she can. That's through all this." said Tony. "And so this is Natasha's fight. Not ours."

"Iron man's gonna sit back and take a chair for once?"

Tony looked at him and smiled sadly. It was hard to say for certain sometimes, but he was evidently tired.

"Let's just keep them alive." he said, itching his nose. "You can do a whole lot of work from a chair."


	14. Chapter 14

Leaning from a chair onto her lap, Clint snored gently beside Natasha. The sand storm outside was in full swing, and though the room was located deep within the bunker, the sounds of the sand hitting the concrete walls above still rang through the space.

The beeping of machines still pulsed regularly through the thickening air. From inside the room, despite the outer noises, it was impossible to discern whether it was day or night.

A figure dragged her fingernails over the headboards of the beds and the scraping noise trailed behind her as she made her way around to Steve's bed. She crouched, her face distorted, and let her nails rest on his forehead. The tubes running to and from him coursed like rivers on a mountaintop down the sides of his bedding, and they rose slightly on occasion, like the mountain range itself was changing over the years. The figure eased herself closer to the captain's ear, and whispered words that blossomed with strange colour at the base of the tunnel to his brain.

His eyes opened without trial or hesitation.

The figure carefully removed some of the tubing.

 _"Aren't you the pretty one?"_ she said when she had cleared any obstructions. Her voice was still as slithery and suspicious as before, and as she lifted his chin with her thumb and forefinger, a glint flitted across her eye. _"I don't think I've seen you up close before."_

"What am I-" began Steve without emotion.

Sophia scowled and released her grip on his chin.

 _"Follow her."_ she commanded. _"She probably won't walk and so you'll have to carry her, but the gist of things is the same. She'll know where she's going."_

The figure - for it was indiscernible when viewed from behind - turned and smiled at the pale-faced Natasha. Her fingernails scraped along the metal again, her eyes dark and malicious.

 _"Be a dear and don't let any of those pesky S.H.I.E.L.D. monkeys get her, won't you? Much appreciated, Captain Rogers."_

Steve didn't respond. All his vital signs had returned, and there was no evidence of anything wrong apart from his face, which remained eerily emotionless and unwavering.

 _"Oh, and be discreet."_ she said, having returned her gaze onto him.

Carefully, the captain threaded the tubes and wires back into position. He settled back into his bedding and promptly shut his eyes.

The figure disappeared.

* * *

Clint blinked awake to find little had changed. Yawning, he lifted up from Natasha's lap and headed towards the door. When he came back, coffee in hand, both beds were empty.

* * *

Embossed on the storm, the silhouettes of two people, one carrying the other, moved across the desert at a steady pace.

Natasha was still unconscious but was not yet showing any symptoms of death. Steve padded across the sand with diligence, though his actual face remained bereft of awareness and emotion; his eyes were fixated on the horizon, the sand hurling against his skin. The grains that caught in his lashes didn't seem to allow the laws of physics to apply to them, and instead of lodging in the crevices of the man's skin and clothing, they appeared to melt and drain off every surface they touched. It gave Steve, and also Natasha, an eerie glow that lit up the space they walked on.

The sand became harsher as the pair went on, but they did not seem to feel the effects of it. With this and the wind, the surrounding world eventually became so blurred that it was impossible to tell where exactly they were. And yet they kept moving, the one following the other even though neither seemed to lead or even follow. When Steve had carried her far enough, he let Natasha fall onto the sand.

"I'm close." she whispered, urging herself awake. The tiny crystals being hurled at her seemed to flow around her body rather than crash into it. "I'm close now."

Natasha stood and fully opened her eyes. The scene ahead seemed tainted, and not just by the harshness of the storm. The world itself flickered between realities, between a raging sandstorm in an American desert and a pacified ocean gently drifting atop a field of black sediment.

"What is this?" she shouted into the worldly confusion. "What are you doing?"

 _"Natasha."_ came the calling. It was different this time, though. The voice seemed more serious than before.

Staggering away from Steve, she searched for Sophia. She stopped when she realised that she was brushing against something as she tried to walk, and she briefly remembered the beach she had encountered. The movement around her legs was unmistakable.

 _"Can you feel them? Odd, aren't they? Feels like something you can swim around in."_

"What are they?" she asked the emptiness.

 _"Thoughts. Electrical impulses converted into semantics - a smell, a scene, a conversation. Memories and ideas."_

"That's it?"

 _"What were you expecting - magic?"_

Natasha paused.

"I thought there'd be more."

 _"There's never more."_

 _"YOU KNEW WHAT IT WAS BEFORE."_ said the other voice that spoke from everywhere.

Upon hearing the Question, Natasha suddenly hit with the realisation of its identity.

'That's me,' she epiphanized. 'That's all it is. It's just me.'

The voice, the one that Sophia hadn't known - it was just her jet-lagged conscious trying to investigate the environment. That was what the 'flashbacks' had been - an attempt to wake herself up. The boldness and arrogance, the schoolmaster voice - it was her. A part she didn't like, maybe, but it was her. The thought was instantly confirmed in her head, as if she had been subconsciously aware of this fact all along.

She sighed, somewhat relieved. One less thing to worry about.

 _"Are you sick of being asleep yet?"_

Natasha redirected her attention to the bodiless voice. Steve stood just behind her, masked by the sand.

"What?"

 _"It's something I get a lot. 'Oh I'm so tired and you make me sleep so much it stops helping' blah blah."_

The woman materialised and beckoned Natasha closer. The spy ambled forward, the crosshatched reality that lay before her making it difficult to see where she was going.

For a brief moment, she let her eyes sweep across the scene.

The storm had cleared. Or, rather, a radius of about 10 metres had emptied around them, leaving a strange, invisible cylindrical wall that towered into the sky from the circumference. The flickering worlds had settled, and it seemed that Natasha was now fully in reality, with the sand a standard beige under her feet. Or, maybe, a new world had appeared altogether.

Natasha kept moving, gradually getting faster. Sophia stood proud and smug in front of her, as human as she could muster herself up to be. She was calm, collected and authoritive - until Natasha pulled up a fist and landed it on her nose.

* * *

"I can't - the suit wouldn't survive the storm."

Clint paced around the first room of the bunker. Tony was leant against a wall, arms folded, and was sighing occassionally to voice his slight annoyance.

"You've flown over deserts before!"

"Barton, if I go out there in that sandstorm, I won't be coming back in. This model of the suit has some older components that will get blocked by that much sand - I can't risk it breaking down mid flight."

"You could at least _try_!"

"Really? You'll have 3 avengers missing in that desert, I mean, if that's what you want then I'll go right ahead but I'm sure Pepper would -"

"Tony I really need you to do this for me."

Tony lifted up from the wall and rested a hand on Clint's shoulder.

"She's doing this on purpose, you know." he said. "She likes the chaos it's creating. We have to wait this out, and we have to stay calm."

Clint pulled away and rubbed his cheeks with his hands.

"I told her I'd keep her alive." he said after a little while.

"Then she knew that it was an empty promise."

* * *

Sophia wiped a line of blood from her nose and examined the red stain on her finger.

"That's new." she said.

Steve was pulling Natasha away from Sophia by her waist, the spy kicking at his legs and pulling at his hands. He flung her back onto the sand so that she skidded slightly before reaching the barrier and she came to a stop with a groan. As Steve walked obediently back to Sophia, Natasha launched her self up and twisted her legs around his neck. He caught her ankle as he fell, bringing her back down onto the ground with him. Using her free leg she pushed her foot into his face, so that he released the hand on her ankle and she could crawl free. His fist chased her and landed on the right side of her lip.

"Steve!" she shouted at him, dodging another blow.

Steve drew in the commands Sophia was silently giving him and continued trying to hit the spy. Spotting a pattern in his movements, Natasha picked her moment and caught his hand just as it was about to land on her eye. She held it for long enough to wriggle away and pull it backwards, forcing an unexpected scream from Steve. As soon as he was distracted, and without any hesitation, Natasha scrunched up her hand and knocked him down.

She looked up from the unconscious captain to the woman a few feet away.

 _"I should really invest in keeping some popcorn to hand."_

Natasha exhaled heavily and tried to ground herself. Her lip was slit and blood slowly trickled down her neck, and she still wore the hospital-like gown that the others had put her and Steve in after they became unresponsive.

"Why'd you do that?" she asked, without much expectation of a sincere answer.

 _"The same reason why I do any of this."_

"And what's that then?"

 _"Because it's fun!"_ screamed Sophia. She had drawn herself into more height than should have been possible, and her face had contorted into that of a soot-black, monsterous creature. It was designed to shock her audience, to be impulsive and fear inducing.

"Is any part of you human at all?" Natasha asked calmly. "You assimilated into some person - must have, you can't have been here since the start - and you took her memories. But is anything actually in there? Anything real?"

Sophia looked offended that Natasha hadn't paid much attention to her exaggerated form. She shrunk down and pouted.

"It's a prison - right? The place where that other 'part' of you is mysteriously camping out in. Maybe it's a more real version of the other world you insist on bringing me to -"

 _"Why are you not scared of me?_

"The prison - it's the reason you aren't all together. The piece of you that causes havoc, the one with the destructive streak - it's not just separated by chance. Someone locked it up, didn't they? Someone shoved you in a prison, and put you under lock and key."

 _"Are you confident or just stupid?"_

"And then you escaped - or, rather, a little part of you did. And you remembered what the key looked like and sort of how to get it - but you needed someone human to really be able to do anything with it."

 _"And you've been wonderfully helpful."_

"Not to mention entertaining, right?" Natasha scoffed.

Sophia inhaled sharply and tipped her head to the sky.

 _"It's close."_ she mumbled. She smiled.

Natasha stared at her but was caught off guard by another voice, unheard by the figure before her.

 _"THE SPIDER DRAWS THE FLY INTO THE WEB AND PLAYS WITH IT UNTIL IT DIES."_

Now that she knew what it was, the Question seemed far less impressive than it did before. Natasha tried to ignore it - it was much better left in the dark of her mind, she decided. Although...

 _"Can you see it?"_ Sophia enquired with open, purple specked eyes. " _Tell me where it is."_

"Why should I?"

 _"You don't have to be like this, Natasha. This could be good for you if you let it."_

"This could never be good for me."

 _"I can help you."_

"How?"

 _"There's only so much that I can see when I'm in someone's head. I don't become them, you see, and there's only so much information you can access if you're not the person in the first place... But I have seen some of your memories._ " she recited this like a B-list actor, with false sweetness that could be peeled off from the skin. And yet Natasha seemed capitulated by this. She continued in desperation. " _Despite what you think, I do have emotions Agent Romanoff. The dance hall. I felt it. The fear. And the business with Clint. The adrenaline and the thrill of being hunted down by someone you are to become so close to. It's all... horrible."_

Natasha just stared, frozen in anticipation.

 _"I only saw what I did because you were strong enough to break free for a moment. There's no-one I know that is that strong without some kind of event in their life that made them stronger. I know there's more._ _I can give you power, Natasha."_ she paused for a moment, and adjusted her voice so that bore true conviction. " _I can give you revenge."_

"Power - how so?" asked Natasha in a quiet voice.

 _"When my sister part is reunited with me here, the complex of my body will be strong enough to destroy worlds. My existence will transcend out of your time and space again - don't you see? I can take you with me. We can change things. Right what has been wronged and be protected under the shield of_ _our own minds - whole eras, tiny fractions of space-time, deleted in an instant."_

"How do I -?"

 _"Is it here? Can you see it?"_

"What do I do?"

 _"All you have to do is touch it. It'll materialise for you."_

"Will it hurt me?"

 _"Not if you're quick. Just reach out and grab it, and then I can take it."_

Apprehensive at first, Natasha reached forth a hand into the oddly textured space. Her fingers traced the edges of the stone suspended there, the roughness strange against her skin.

 _"Have you got it?"_ Sophia said excitedly. _"That's it - bring it out."_

Natasha slowly curled her fingers around the object.

 _"Come on, you're almost there."_

Feeling the weight of what she was holding, Natasha smiled. More than smiled - smirked - no - _grinned_ \- then let her lips press together again before she could not resist the urge to laugh any longer.

 _"What are you doing?"_ asked Sophia.

The spy's hand retracted, the stone hidden in her hand.

"It's powerful, right?"

 _"What?"_

"The stone itself. It's got power, no?"

Sophia glared at her, betrayed, desperate.

 _"What are you talking about? How are you holding it for so long?"_

"No, you don't know what it can do. You don't know, do you?"

 _"Just give it to me."_ she demanded, confused.

Natasha smiled again, a wide, tired smile that stretched across her face. She examined the object that now lay rested on her palm.

"Didn't you think it was strange how you couldn't touch it? Sure, it stops the prisoner from unlocking her own cell. But why else? Why would you not be able to touch it?"

 _"Give me the stone!"_

"Because it can hurt you."

 _"Well of course it can."_

"But think _how_ it can hurt you, Sophia!"

 _"What does that matter?"_

"You still don't know."

 _"Just give it to me!"_

Sophia's eyes were wide, confused and desperate. Being so close to what she wanted was the only thing that kept her listening.

"There's probably a few perks to holding this, you know. In fact," Natasha started, locking onto the forefront of Sophia's mind and glowering. Her eyes glowed under a red glaze of fury.

"I'm willing to bet that I can do this:"

 ** _Ugh I'm awful at writing fight scenes...  
Last chapter next week, I think!_**


	15. Chapter 15

Natasha's fingers clamped shut and squeezed the rock. Around her, the clearing became swallowed with flame, and when the wisps of fire had reached the walls, they fell away to reveal almost total darkness. Sophia, her eyes seemingly iridescent with vivid purple, hissed.

 _"What is this?"_ she snarled.

"I don't know." said Natasha truthfully. She had guessed that the stone held power, she had followed the link from herself back to Sophia to check, but now she was unsure of what was meant to happen. Natasha looked back for a second to see whether Steve was still there, but she couldn't see through the dark.

She let her fingers uncurl and revealed the stone. It rested, motionless on her palm, though it glowed a fearsome blue.

 _"That should be burning you."_ said Sophia in disbelief. She reached out in one final attempt to grab the key to her prison, and screamed at the pain it gave her. The woman transformed into the hooded figure of before and snatched it, gripping the stone ever tighter, but Natasha's hand cupped around Sophia's, so that both were making contact with the rock. The key's colour bled through their fingers and burned the skin of Sophia's arms.

It - the creature that remained - screeched. The savage purple that it contained met with jagged ends against the building blue, like the sharp sound of the angered screaming itself against the dulled whooshing outside the barren circle. The colours whizzed around the circuit that was formed between Natasha and Sophia until they gathered so much energy that they burst out, through the invisible wall and into the storm, rapidly ballooning out in two separately coloured spheres. Natasha and the woman were sent flying with it across the desert, silhouettes against the light.

The dust and sand outside rolled at the force but made no sound as the pigmented energy stretched towards the horizon, silencing everything it touched.

Then, the sand and the memories fell from the sky and the explosion was over.

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D. agents watched from the bunker as the sandstorm very suddenly ceased. They listened, confused, to the pattering of the sand falling back to the ground outside, then dismissed the matter and rushed out to do their jobs. Director Fury led his agents outward, taking long strides just short of what was needed to qualify running.

He was the first to reach Natasha.

Her hands pushed against the sand as she tried to readjust to full consciousness quicker, but the effort was made with little success, and so she dropped now to just hover over the sand, propped up by her elbows. A bead of blood made its way down her face.

"You're okay." assured Fury, laying hand on her back to calm her. His eye was focussed on the scene before him. A thickening gradient of black fed back into the centre of the explosion site, the sand strange - _alien -_ against the usual grains of the quietened desert. "You did good, Romanoff."

Clint appeared in the distance.

"We found Rogers - he's alright!" he called as he jogged towards the two. Fury nodded slowly and helped Natasha to her feet.

"Did we do it? Is that it?" she asked when she found her balance. Her gaze was stolen by the centre of the radiating black circle a few hundred metres away. Clint threaded his arm under hers as support.

"I think she's gone." confirmed Fury. He was looking at her now, paternally almost, trying to assess any damage.

Natasha pushed away from her colleagues and wiped the blood away with her thumb.

"Good." she said with a soft sigh. "Good."

Clint felt exhaustion sink over the entire desert. For a long while, the three of them stood there in a comfortable but curious silence, a gentle breeze brushing past them occasionally. Any trace of the storm before had all but vanished, as had the woman and her longed-for object. The only evidence of the fight itself was the black sand now, and even that seemed to be slowly fading away, with the circle getting smaller and smaller.  
Natasha didn't seem any less tired than she had done before. If she were truly cured of the parasite, she didn't clearly show it - indeed, her resistance to the explosion and the sandstorm didn't seem to make her regained mortality look at all convincing. Clint supposed that she had felt the return of control over herself though. Maybe it wasn't right to speak about it until she could be certain.

Without disturbing the quiet, Fury turned and walked away slowly to where Captain America would be. Natasha took this as a cue for her to leave to, and Clint followed like a stray back to the road.

"Are you okay?" he asked without attempting to make eye-contact.

"Yeah, I'm fine." she answered, composed, unnerved.

"Nat, you went out in a desert sandstorm without any kind of covering. You shouldn't have survived _that_ , never mind the big alien explosion thing. Is there really nothing wrong?"

"I'm tired." she said, folding her arms. "But she's gone."

"What happened?"

Natasha shuffled a little and furrowed her eyebrows. She caught her teeth pushing into her lip and stopped herself before she cut her lip.

"I woke up in between the storm and the other world. Rogers had carried me out there - _she_ was controlling him and he fought me when I tried to attack her. He was behind me as I reached for the stone Sophia had been searching for. I don't know where he went after that; he wasn't the one I was focussing on.

"She was inside my head, Clint. I looked inside hers in return. I don't know exactly what I found, but I was told that the key was a weapon. Something I could use. Something I could reach."

Clint let his eyes be drawn to her and frowned.

"What did you do?" he whispered. They had reached the edge of the road by now and were being watched by the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents around them.

"I took it and used the link between us to ascertain how to get it to detonate. Sophia's not human, not really, but the key was made for the use of people. I doubt she consciously knew what it could do. Maybe she'd conjured the thought, but didn't want to explore the idea."

"Would it have freed her?"

"What?"

"You destroyed her with the stone. It was a weapon. Was it a key at all? Would it unlock whatever twisted part was put away?"

Natasha pondered over it.

"I don't know. She hoped it would."

Clint sighed. He'd lost track of the time of day, but the egg-yolk yellow sun was hanging low and cast long shadows across the sands. He'd seen the skies as clear as this many times. He would listen out for the birdsong in the morning.

"Did you find out why she was imprisoned?"

Natasha shook her head at the question. "Whatever it was, it was probably the thing that drew S.H.I.E.L.D. to her."

Clint rubbed his temples absent-mindedly. "They thought they could investigate her. Control her, even..."

"They always do."

"They're not going to give up on this though. If this 'prison state' is accessible to humans, S.H.I.E.L.D. will be looking for a way harvest the space. Access it more easily without the nasty mind-control-by-alien aspect."

"Business as usual then."

There was brief interlude of quiet, as would often happen, and then the silence fell away again. Clint spoke:

"You know how we were faced with a choice a while ago, and we made the decision to reject Fury's orders? Well, looking back, maybe we should have chosen S.H.I.E.L.D."

Natasha scoffed.

"Stick by your decisions, Clint. I doubt we'd have found the whole set-up much quicker if we followed that bullshit."

He nodded and cracked a smile.

"I'd like to think Fury wasn't expecting much different from us."

Natasha didn't return the smile and stepped out towards the road. Her vision grew hazy for a second and she faltered in her step, but she caught herself before she fell, and before Clint could step in to help her.

"Don't fall asleep on me, will you?" he asked somewhat jokily.

"I wasn't planning on it," she smiled, before muttering "Not for a while at least."

Clint looked at her, slightly concerned. Natasha was staring ahead, solemn but determined, and he took a second to breathe before he took a step forwards and joined her on the road.

Sleep, he supposed, was a sacrifice Natasha was prepared to make. And hell knew, he couldn't argue with her.

* * *

 ** _Okay, that's the end._**

 _ **I've been entirely unfair to you guys, I know, and I'm sorry that this took so long to get out. I really appreciate all the support for this story, especially considering this was more an experimental piece than something properly formulated. I'm pretty sure most of you might have guessed that anyway, judging by all the (admittedly justified) confusion.**_

 _ **Any comments or questions you have are always appreciated in the review section - I'll try to clear stuff up if anyone really wants.**_

 _ **Many thanks to all those who stuck with it.**_


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